Patent ID: 7801682

Claim:
A method for characterizing a 3D organization of telomeres and/or chromosomes, the method comprising: (i) inputting image data of the 3D organization of telomeres and/or chromosomes; (ii) processing the image data using an image data processor to find a set of coordinates {(x i ,y i ,z i )}, i=1, . . . , N, where (x i ,y i ,z i )is a position of the ith telomere and/or chromosome; (iii) finding a plane that is closest to the set of coordinates; and (iv) finding a set of distances {d i }, i=1, . . . , N, where d i is the distance between (x i ,y i ,z i ) and the plane, wherein the set { d i} is utilized to characterize the 3D organization.