BACKGROUND

An important objective for scientists is to statistically compare staining intensity (Fig. 1) or fluorescence (Fig. 2) for a particular marker between treatments or groups. Simply “eyeballing” an image and stating that a particular treatment or group is more densely stained or brightly fluorescent than another treatment or group is insufficient for scientific publications. Systems are available for image analysis in immunohistochemistry. However, many of these systems require expensive software and hardware attachments for acquisition, analysis, and storage of images. Therefore, an inexpensive and reliable alternative for image analysis is desirable.