Motion detection for subcellular structure trafficking

A detailed understanding of subcellular structure motility is critical to understanding how cells regulate the delivery of specific proteins from the site of synthesis to the site of action. Diverse modalities have been observed for subcellular dynamics, such as directional movement, random movement, tethered movement, object appearing, and disappearing. Motion modality detection is important for efficient subcelluar structure tracking and population study. In this paper, we present a new technique, called "divergence filter," for detecting subcellular structure motion modalities. The plausibility of the efficient technique was applied to caveolar membrane trafficking sequences obtained using confocal microscopy.