Automated Tracking of Moving Cellls in Vitro Using a Modified SuperCorrelation Algorithm

Diploma Thesis 2003, University of Magdeburg, Germany

Abstract:

Cell migration plays a key role in a wide variety of biological phenomena. The study of two different migration strategies, polarization and amoeboid migration, shows specific morphological changes in cell size and shape during the locomotion cycle as well as different cell translocation distances.
This thesis presents a method for motion estimation and automated tracking of migrating cells within a video sequence of phase contrast images. Through robust correlation techniques an enhanced block matching algorithm is developed that addresses scale and shape variations during the locomotion steps specific to the mentioned migration strategies. Additionally irregular, multi-directional motion has been borne in mind in the tracking method. A probability analysis with respect to the estimated position to verify the SuperCorrelation result is introduced. The efficiency of the proposed method, namely the running time of the algorithm and the percentage ratio of correctly tracked cells, is demonstrated in experimental results. The developed method has many potential applications in the area of cell tracking and image analysis.

 

tracking of moving cells		tracking of a table tennis ball