Patent ID: 8084203

Claim:
A method for the determination of an average telomere length of a cell in an immobilized tridimensional test cell population, the method comprising: (i) contacting said test cell population and at least two control cell populations with a probe, wherein the probe is labeled with a first fluorescent dye and hybridizes in situ specifically to a complementary repeat DNA sequence within telomeres, wherein the control cell populations have known, stable, and different average telomere lengths; (ii) obtaining at least two fluorescence microscopy images of the test cell population and each one of the control cell populations by acquiring a fluorescence intensity emitted by the first fluorescent dye at a position in the fluorescence microscopy images in response to radiation, wherein each one of the fluorescence microscopy images of the test cell population and the control cell populations corresponds to a different focal plane of each population; (iii) converting the at least two fluorescence microscopy images for each population into single images for each population by adding up the fluorescence intensity at each position within each focal plane for each population; (iv) determining an average fluorescence intensity value in a cell of said test cell population and an average fluorescence intensity value of cells within each control cell population based on the single images obtained in step (iii); and (v) assigning to the cell of the test cell population an average telomere length value, wherein said average telomere length value is interpolated from the average fluorescence intensity value of each control cell population and the known average telomere lengths of the corresponding control cell populations.