Maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimator for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) processes

Hossein Kakavand; Deirdre O'brien; Arjang Hassibi; Thomas H Lee

doi:10.1109/IEMBS.2004.1403854

Maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimator for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) processes

Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2004:2004:3015-8. doi: 10.1109/IEMBS.2004.1403854.

Authors

Hossein Kakavand¹, Deirdre O'brien, Arjang Hassibi, Thomas H Lee

Affiliation

¹ Dept. of Electr. Eng., Stanford Univ., CA, USA.

PMID: 17270913
DOI: 10.1109/IEMBS.2004.1403854

Abstract

A maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimator for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays is presented. The estimation relies on the replication efficiencies of the PCR assay and the observed end-point concentration of the PCR product at an arbitrary cycle. This derivation is carried out in view of the stochastic progression of the amplicons, and the assumption that the end-point concentrations for any particular initial value have a jointly Gaussian distribution. In addition, we provide an extension for the estimator which can be applied to various quantitative PCR assays.