10 - Real-time tracking of keratinocyte migration and analysis
of cell membrane shape changes

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 642866.

Andor Technology (AND) - United Kingdom

Supervisors: Peter Majer, Claire Greenwood

Student: Katerina Lomanov

Imaging of moving cells requires continuous adjustments to keep cells within the imaging field and in focus. We will develop methods to control microscopes via Andor's IQ-software to keep the cell of interest in the centre of the imaging field. Using available imaging data, we will first investigate algorithms that compute movement directly from the image data (matching, optical flow). The usefulness of algorithms that segment the image data first will be examined. Once the tracking problem is solved, we will look at methods to automatically adjust microscope focus in real time as well. More generally, we will work toward an automated imaging system that requires as little user input as possible. To automatically analyze local shape changes of single keratinocytes during migration we will test algorithms to compute local growth rates and to detect newly emerging filopodia, lamellipodial protrusions, and fluorescently-labelled focal adhesions and cytoskeletal filaments from 2D and possibly 3D images of migrating cells. We will optimise ways to visualise the resulting information to make it easily accessible to the researcher. In cooperation shape descriptors will be defined to allow the characterisation and comparison of the evolution of cell shape during motion cycles of real and stimulated cells.