Data acquisition system for maximum-likelihood analysis of electron microscopic autoradiographs

EMAMAP is a program for the data acquisition phase of maximum-likelihood analysis of electron microscope autoradiographs. This program is written in C and has been implemented on a Masscomp MC-500 which supports a graphics processor and a digitizing tablet. The image analysis is automated at a low level: the program operator outlines the edges of the structures of interest using the digitizing tablet, while contiguous regions formed by closed contours are automatically filled by the software. The resulting image is compressed for efficient storage by a quadtree encoding technique for which data compression ratios of greater than 25:1 have been achieved. In practical terms, this implies that the data from a typical experiment of 50 autoradiographs could be stored on a single floppy disk. The system is currently in use for acquiring actual biological experimental data.