MigraR: An open-source, R-based application for analysis and quantification of cell migration parameters.

Area of Science:

• Cell biology
• Biophysics
• Computational biology

Background:

• Cell migration is crucial for biological processes and diseases.
• Analyzing cell migration involves complex data from time-lapse microscopy.
• Existing software often presents challenges in data visualization and metric calculation.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce MigraR, a user-friendly R package with a graphical interface.
• Simplify the analysis and visualization of cell migration data.
• Provide tools for calculating migration parameters like velocity and straightness.

Main Methods:

• Developed MigraR using R and Shiny for an intuitive graphical user interface.
• MigraR processes cell trajectory coordinate data.
• Enables data refinement through user-defined time, velocity, and straightness limits.

Main Results:

• MigraR effectively translates cell coordinate data into migration metrics and plots.
• The tool was validated on diverse datasets.
• Designed for cell biologists lacking extensive data analysis expertise.

Conclusions:

• MigraR is a valuable tool for analyzing cell migration parameters and trajectories.
• Its open-source nature allows for community-driven enhancements.
• Easily accessible on GitHub for reproduction and further development.