Quantitative biological studies enabled by robust cell tracking

A growing number of screening applications require the automated monitoring of cell populations enabled by cell segmentation and tracking algorithms in a high-throughput, high-content environment. Building upon the tracks generated by such algorithms, we derive biologically relevant features and demonstrate a range of biological studies made possible by such quantitative measures. In the first, we introduce a combination of quantitative features that characterize cell apoptosis and arrest. In the second, we automatically measure the effect of motility-promoting serums. In the third, we show that proper dosage levels can be automatically determined for studying protein translocations. These results provide large-scale quantitative validation of biological experiments and demonstrate that our framework provides a valuable tool for high-throughout biological studies. © 2011 IEEE.