Falsified images have occasionally been found in papers involved in research misconducts, but none of existing image forgery detection methods was designed for molecular-biological experiment images. We developed a fast blind inquiry method, named FBI-Gel, for integrity of images of molecular experiments, i.e., western blot (WB) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Based on an optimized pseudo-background capable of highlighting local residues, FBI-GEL can reveal vestiges suggesting inappropriate local modifications. Besides, the optimized pseudo-background is derived based on a closed-form solution, so FBI-GEL is computationally efficient and suitable for large scale integrity inquiry tasks. Experiment results indicates FBI-Gel can identify forgery regions successfully.FBI-Gel performs blind detection by making invisible unnatural patterns just noticeable. Therefore, the contributions of FBI-Gel are threefold.
(1) Extending background analysis to a new realm, FBI-Gel is the first blind inquiry method for integrity of gel electrophoresis images.
(2) FBI-Gel is nearly parameter free, and all its inspection results are derived on the same basis. Therefore, FBI-Gel can avoid false-alarms effectively.
(3) FBI-Gel operates based on the closed-form solution. It is thus computationally fast and suitable for large-scale inquiry tasks.We developed a fast blind inquiry method, named FBI-Gel, for integrity of images obtained from western blot (WB) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) results.
We have to emphasize two points. First, FBI-Gel was not designed for accusing anyone; instead, FBI-Gel was developed for helping academic community identify problematic figures and irreproducible experiments. Second, whether an image with unnatural pattern invalidates its significance in that very field is beyond the scope of this method.
We hope the proposed FBI-Gel can help research community and editorial offices of journals not be deceived by forging experimental images of molecular biology.