October 7, 2010 - Takeo Kanade, Carnegie Mellon University

Title: Tracking a Large Number of Migrating and Proliferating Cells in Time-Lapse Microscopy Imagery

Abstract:
As a computer vision researcher, I believe that the advanced technologies of image motion analysis have great opportunities to help rapid advancement of biological discovery and its transition into new clinical therapies. In collaboration with biomedical engineers, my group has been developing a system for analyzing a time-lapse microscope-image sequence, typically from a phase-contrast or differential interference contrast (DIC) microscope that can precisely and individually track a large number of cells, while they undergo migration (translocation), mitosis (division), and apoptosis (death), and could construct complete cell lineages (mother-daughter relations) of the whole cell population.  Such a capability of high-throughput spatiotemporal analysis of cell behaviors allows for “engineering individual cells” - directing the migration and proliferation of tissue cells in real time in Tissue Engineering for seeding and culturing cells with hormones to induce growth of tissue.

The low signal-to-noise ratio of microscopy images, high and varying densities of cell cultures, topological complexities of cell shapes, and occurrences of cell divisions, touching and overlapping pose significant challenges to existing image-based tracking techniques.  I will present the challenges, results, and excitement of the new application area of motion image analysis.