System and methods for automated processing of multiple chemical arrays

A system and method of operating a data processing system to provide feature extraction from an image obtained from a plurality of chemical arrays is disclosed. The method includes bifurcating processing of the image by performing image processing and post-processing. The image processing includes processing parts of the image, each part corresponding to a different one of the arrays, in an automated batch process, to produce image-processed outputs that are different from the image and contain information extracted from the image. The post-processing includes processing the image-processed outputs according to different post-processing protocols with respect to different ones of those parts of the image corresponding to at least two of the arrays, to produce post-processed outputs. The method includes outputting at least one of the image-processed outputs and/or at least one of the post-processed outputs.