Detection and measurement of the intracellular calcium variation in follicular cells

This work presents a new method for measuring the variation of intracellular calcium in follicular cells. The proposal consists in two stages: (i) the detection of the cell's nuclei and (ii) the analysis of the fluorescence variations. The first stage is performed via watershed modified transformation, where the process of labeling is controlled. The detection process uses the contours of the cells as descriptors, where they are enhanced with a morphological filter that homogenizes the luminance variation of the image. In the second stage, the fluorescence variations are modeled as an exponential decreasing function, where the fluorescence variations are highly correlated with the changes of intracellular free Ca(2+). Additionally, it is introduced a new morphological called medium reconstruction process, which helps to enhance the data for the modeling process. This filter exploits the undermodeling and overmodeling properties of reconstruction operators, such that it preserves the structure of the original signal. Finally, an experimental process shows evidence of the capabilities of the proposal.