Automatic microtubule tracking in fluorescence images of cells doped with increasing concentrations of taxol and nocodazole

TL;DR

This paper presents an automated algorithm for detecting and tracking microtubules in fluorescence microscopy images, analyzing their dynamics under drug treatments to understand their behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a novel automated method for microtubule tracking and provides insights into their dynamic behavior under drug influence.

Findings

Algorithm successfully tracks microtubules in fluorescence images.

Microtubule dynamics vary with drug treatment.

Provides quantitative analysis of microtubule instability.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide an algorithm for detecting and tracking astral MTs in a fully automated way and supply a description of their dynamic behaviour. For the algorithm testing, a dataset of stacks (i.e. time-lapse image sequences), acquired with a confocal microscope, has been employed. Cells were treated with two different drugs, nocodazole and taxol, in order to explore their effect on microtubule dynamic instability.