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FloCyT: A Flow-Aware Centroid Tracker for Cell Analysis in High-Speed Capillary-Driven Microfluidic Flow.
Suraj K Maurya1,2, Matt Stark2, Cédric Bessire2
1Bio/CMOS Interfaces Laboratory, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Rue de la Maladiere 71, 2000 Neuchatel, Switzerland.
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
|November 27, 2025
Summary
FloCyT accurately tracks cells in capillary-driven microfluidic devices, overcoming challenges like flow instability. This new tool enhances diagnostic capabilities for point-of-care applications.
Area of Science:
- Microfluidics
- Biomedical Engineering
- Computational Biology
Background:
- Capillary-driven microfluidic chips are valuable for point-of-care diagnostics due to their portability and low cost.
- Accurate cell tracking is essential for quantitative analysis in microfluidic systems, but faces challenges like flow instabilities and similar cell appearances.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a robust, high-speed centroid tracking tool, FloCyT, specifically for capillary-driven microfluidic flow.
- To improve the accuracy and completeness of cell trajectories in challenging microfluidic environments.
Main Methods:
- FloCyT utilizes microchannel geometry, anisotropic gating, global flow-aware track initialization, and channel-specific association for cell tracking.
- The tool was evaluated on simulated and real patient datasets using metrics like IDF1, MOTA, ID switches, and percentage of mostly tracked objects.
Main Results:
- FloCyT demonstrated superior performance compared to conventional algorithms like TrackPy and SORT, including flow-aware modifications.
- Achieved higher accuracy, more complete trajectories, and significantly fewer identity switches in cell tracking.
Conclusions:
- FloCyT enables precise and automated cell tracking in capillary-driven microfluidic devices.
- Enhances quantitative sensing capabilities for image-based microfluidic diagnostics, supporting low-cost, portable cytometry applications.
