Towards Automatic Construction of Cell-Lineage of C. elegans from Nomarski DIC Microscope Images

Abstract

This study aims at automatic construction of a cell lineage from 4D (multi-focal, time-lapse) images, which are taken using a Nomarski DIC (differential-interference contrast) microscope. A system with such abilities would be a powerful tool for studying embryo genesis and gene function based on mutants, whose cell lineage may differ from that of wild types. We have designed and implemented a system for this purpose, and examined its ability through computational experiments.The procedure of our system consists of two parts:(1) Image processing which detect the positions of the nuclei from each 2D microscope image, and (2) Constructing a hypothetical cell lineage based on the information obtained in (1). We have also developed a tool which allows a human expert to easily filter out erroneous nuclei candidates generated in (1). We present computational results and also discuss other ideas which may improve the performance of our system.