Analysis of the Steps in Single-Molecule Photobleaching Traces by Using the Hidden Markov Model and Maximum-Likelihood Clustering

Bleach party: A hidden Markov model (HMM) algorithm was used to extract the steps in single-molecule photobleaching traces. A maximum-likelihood clustering algorithm was used to initialize the emission-probability distribution of the HMMs. An extended silhouette clustering criterion was used to estimate the state number of single molecules. This method was verified for both simulated data and experimental data from single-molecule imaging. The...