Assessment of a cell counting method using Python and OpenCV for cultured insect cells of the sleeping chironomid, Polypedilum vanderplanki

Abstract

 Counting cell number in cultured cells is a simple but important task in the first step of the research. Pv11, which is a cultured cell line from the sleeping chironomid, Polypedilum vanderplanki, is smaller than typical insect cultured cells and it takes a lot of time and effort for cell counting. To solve this issue, we suggest a method using Python and OpenCV in this report. The cells were stained with two color fluorescent dyes (blue and red) and images were taken for counting. The one counting sample consisted of two images, from which it was possible to reduce counting errors. The time it took to do counting for one sample was 0.3 seconds and 8 seconds for 25 samples. We consider effective to write a simple code using Python adapted to the characteristics of target cultured cells.