High-resolution cell outline segmentation and tracking from phase-contrast microscopy images
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Accurate extraction of cell outlines from microscopy images is essential for analysing the dynamics of migrating cells. Phase-contrast microscopy is one of the most common and convenient imaging modalities for observing cell motility because it does not require exogenous labelling and uses only moderate light levels with generally negligible phototoxicity effects. Automatic extraction and tracking of high-resolution cell outlines from phase-contrast images, however, is difficult due to complex and non-uniform edge intensity. We present a novel image-processing method based on refined level-set segmentation for accurate extraction of cell outlines from high-resolution phase-contrast images. The algorithm is validated on synthetic images of defined noise levels and applied to real image sequences of polarizing and persistently migrating keratocyte cells. We demonstrate that the algorithm is able to reliably reveal fine features in the cell edge dynamics.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 161-170 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Journal of Microscopy |
Volume | 245 |
Issue number | 2 |
Publication status | Published - Feb 2012 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Externally published | Yes |
External IDs
PubMed | 21999192 |
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ORCID | /0000-0003-4414-4340/work/159608302 |
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- Cell motility, Cell outline tracking, Cell polarization, Cell shape, Edge detection, Level-set segmentation, Near-optimal thresholding, Phase-contrast microscopy