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Updated: May 3, 2026
A Protocol for Real-time 3D Single Particle Tracking
Published on: January 3, 2018
Objective comparison of particle tracking methods
Nicolas Chenouard1, Ihor Smal2, Fabrice de Chaumont3
11] Institut Pasteur, Unité d'Analyse d'Images Quantitative, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Unité de Recherche Associée 2582, Paris, France. [2] Biomedical Imaging Group, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. [3] New York University Neuroscience Institute, New York University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA. [4].
Abstract:
Particle tracking is of key importance for quantitative analysis of intracellular dynamic processes from time-lapse microscopy image data. Because manually detecting and following large numbers of individual particles is not feasible, automated computational methods have been developed for these tasks by many groups. Aiming to perform an objective comparison of methods, we gathered the community and organized an open competition in which participating teams applied their own methods independently to a commonly defined data set including diverse scenarios. Performance was assessed using commonly defined measures. Although no single method performed best across all scenarios, the results revealed clear differences between the various approaches, leading to notable practical conclusions for users and developers.
