Label Free Cell-Tracking and Division Detection Based on 2D Time-Lapse Images For Lineage Analysis of Early Embryo Development

摘要

In this paper we report a database and a series of techniques related to the problem of tracking cells, and detecting their divisions, in time-lapse movies of mammalian embryos. Our contributions are: (1) a method for counting embryos in a well, and cropping each individual embryo across frames, to create individual movies for cell tracking; (2) a semi-automated method for cell tracking that works up to the 8-cell stage, along with a software implementation available to the public (this software was used to build the reported database); (3) an algorithm for automatic tracking up to the 4-cell stage, based on histograms of mirror symmetry coefficients captured using wavelets; (4) a cell-tracking database containing 100 annotated examples of mammalian embryos up to the 8-cell stage; (5) statistical analysis of various timing distributions obtained from those examples.