High Throughput Analysis of Plankton Morphology and Dynamic

摘要

Changes in morphology and swimming dynamics of plankton by exposure to toxic chemicals are studied usinga novel a new paradigm of image acquisition and computer vision system. Single cell ciliate Stentor coeruleusenclosed in a drop of water provide a means to automatically deposit many individual samples on a at surface.Chemicals of interest are automatically added to each drop while the dynamical and morphological changes arecaptured with an optical microscope. With computer vision techniques, we analyze the motion trajectory of eachplankton sample, along with its shape information, quantifying the sub-lethal impact of chemicals on planktonhealth. The system enables large screening of hundreds of chemicals of environmental interest which may maketheir way into water habitats.