Digital autoradiography: design, development, and evaluation of a solid-state image analyzer.

A digital image analyzer was developed for high spatial resolution analysis of autoradiograms. The system uses a linear array of charge-coupled devices operating under microcomputer control to scan and digitize autoradiograms into matrices of up to 1,500 X 2,000 pixels with 256 gray levels. The digitized images can be converted from gray scale to pseudo-color and displayed on a high resolution color monitor. Software was developed to facilitate quantitative analysis of autoradiograms produced in single and multiple tracer studies. Because of the high output linearity and accuracy of the solid-state detectors, the system was found to digitize autoradiograms significantly more precisely and accurately than previously described autoradiographic analyzers.