Non-rigid alignment of multi-channel fluorescence microscopy images of live cells for improved classification of subcellular particle motion

摘要

The observed motion of subcellular particles in fluorescence microscopy image sequences of live cells is generally a superposition of the motion and deformation of the cell and the motion of the particles. Decoupling the two types of movements to enable accurate classification of the particle motion requires the application of registration algorithms. We have developed an intensity-based approach which is based on an optic-flow estimation algorithm for non-rigid registration of multi-channel microscopy image sequences of cell nuclei. First, based on 3D synthetic images we demonstrate that cell nucleus deformations change the observed motion types of particles and that our approach allows to recover the original motion. Second, we have successfully applied our approach to register 2D and 3D real microscopy image sequences. A quantitative comparison with a previous scheme has also been performed.