A framework for automated cell tracking in phase contrast microscopic videos based on normal velocities

作者：Moeller Michael; Burger Martin^*; Dieterich Peter; Schwab Albrecht

来源：Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, 2014, 25(2): 396-409.

DOI：10.1016/j.jvcir.2013.12.002

• Cell tracking
• Phase contrast microscopy
• Optical flow
• Active contours
• Melanoma cells
• Variational methods
• Level set methods
• Topology preservation

This paper introduces a novel framework for the automated tracking of cells, with a particular focus on the challenging situation of phase contrast microscopic videos. Our framework is based on a topology preserving variational segmentation approach applied to normal velocity components obtained from optical flow computations, which appears to yield robust tracking and automated extraction of cell trajectories. In order to obtain improved trackings of local shape features we discuss an additional correction step based on active contours and the image Laplacian which we optimize for an example class of transformed renal epithelial (MDCK-F) cells. We also test the framework for human melanoma cells and murine neutrophil granulocytes that were seeded on different types of extracellular matrices. The results are validated with manual tracking results.

• 出版日期2014-2