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Published on: April 13, 2019
An affine transformation invariance approach to cell tracking
Jing Cui1, Nilanjan Ray, Scott T Acton
1Department of Radiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-5842, United States. jingcui@med.umich.edu
Summary
A new affine transformation invariance method accurately tracks rolling leukocytes in microscopy images, improving inflammation research. This robust approach outperforms existing methods in accuracy and success rate for both dark and bright targets.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Engineering
- Cell Biology
- Image Analysis
Background:
- Leukocyte rolling in microvasculature is a key indicator of inflammatory response.
- Accurate tracking of rolling leukocytes is crucial for advancing inflammation research.
- Existing tracking methods face challenges with image clutter and variations in target appearance.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and evaluate an affine transformation invariance approach for robustly tracking rolling leukocytes in intravital microscopy image sequences.
- To compare the performance of the proposed method against active contour and Monte Carlo tracking techniques.
- To assess the method's effectiveness in tracking both dark and bright target leukocytes.
Main Methods:
- The proposed method utilizes affine transformation invariance to accommodate target transformations (translation, rotation, scaling).
- A particle filter is incorporated to handle image clutter effectively.
- Performance was evaluated using root mean square error and percentage of frames tracked against manual tracking references.
Main Results:
- The affine transformation invariance approach achieved a lower root mean square error (0.74 µm) and higher percentage of frames tracked (89%) compared to active contour (0.95 µm, 72%) and Monte Carlo (0.79 µm, 75%) methods.
- The method demonstrated superior performance in tracking difficult dark target leukocytes.
- It also showed significant advantages in tracking bright target leukocytes, outperforming other methods in most sequences.
Conclusions:
- The affine transformation invariance approach offers a more accurate and robust solution for tracking rolling leukocytes in microscopy.
- This method has the potential to significantly enhance the study of inflammatory processes.
- The approach is effective across various imaging conditions, including challenging scenarios with low contrast targets.
