Abstract
It is difficult to observe objects moving fast in a microscopy. We develop a microscope with three dimensional auto-tracking function by simultaneous observation in two directions. In the first step, we tried to track an object in a two dimensional plane by observation in one direction. The sample for the tracking was a dinoflagellate Symbiodinium. First, microscopic images were imported into a computer, and one of the images was processed to acquire the position of a Symbiodinium cell in this image. Then, a motorized stage was controlled based on the position of the Symbiodinium cell. The motorized stage was moved so that the cell came to the center of the view. We developed these program using Lab VIEW. It took approximately 500 milliseconds to process an image and to move stage. Two dimensional tracking of a swimming Symbiodinium was successfully demonstrated for the cell drew a circular trajectory parallel to the observed plane. However, when a cell went straight on, we couldn't track it. The reason for the problem seems to that the cell swims too fast to track it or the image of the cell becomes vague.
