Automated 3-D tracking of centrosomes in sequences of confocal image stacks

Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2009:2009:6994-7. doi: 10.1109/IEMBS.2009.5333856.

Abstract

In order to facilitate the study of neuron migration, we propose a method for 3-D detection and tracking of centrosomes in time-lapse confocal image stacks of live neuron cells. We combine Laplacian-based blob detection, adaptive thresholding, and the extraction of scale and roundness features to find centrosome-like objects in each frame. We link these detections using the joint probabilistic data association filter (JPDAF) tracking algorithm with a Newtonian state-space model tailored to the motion characteristics of centrosomes in live neurons. We apply our algorithm to image sequences containing multiple cells, some of which had been treated with motion-inhibiting drugs. We provide qualitative results and quantitative comparisons to manual segmentation and tracking results showing that our average motion estimates agree to within 13% of those computed manually by neurobiologists.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Animals
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Cell Movement
  • Centrosome / physiology
  • Centrosome / ultrastructure*
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins / metabolism
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / methods*
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / statistics & numerical data
  • In Vitro Techniques
  • Microscopy, Confocal / methods*
  • Microscopy, Confocal / statistics & numerical data
  • Movement
  • Neurons / physiology
  • Neurons / ultrastructure
  • Recombinant Proteins / metabolism

Substances

  • Recombinant Proteins
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins