Yeh Yu-Sing, Huang Ke-Nung, Jen Sun-Lon, Li Yan-Chay, Young Ming-Shing
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, 701 Taiwan.
Rev Sci Instrum. 2010 Jul;81(7):074302. doi: 10.1063/1.3460266.
This investigation develops a multitarget tracking system for the motile protozoa, paramecium. The system can recognize, track, and record the orbit of swimming paramecia within a 4 mm diameter of a circular experimental pool. The proposed system is implemented using an optical microscope, a charge-coupled device camera, and a software tool, Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench (LABVIEW). An algorithm for processing the images and analyzing the traces of the paramecia is developed in LABVIEW. It focuses on extracting meaningful data in an experiment and recording them to elucidate the behavior of paramecia. The algorithm can also continue to track paramecia even if they are transposed or collide with each other. The experiment demonstrates that this multitarget tracking design can really track more than five paramecia and simultaneously yield meaningful data from the moving paramecia at a maximum speed of 1.7 mm/s.
本研究为活动原生动物草履虫开发了一种多目标跟踪系统。该系统能够识别、跟踪并记录圆形实验池直径4毫米范围内游动的草履虫的轨迹。所提出的系统利用光学显微镜、电荷耦合器件相机以及软件工具“实验室虚拟仪器工程工作台（LABVIEW）”来实现。在LABVIEW中开发了一种用于处理图像和分析草履虫轨迹的算法。它专注于在实验中提取有意义的数据并进行记录，以阐明草履虫的行为。即使草履虫相互换位或碰撞，该算法也能继续跟踪它们。实验表明，这种多目标跟踪设计确实能够跟踪五只以上的草履虫，并以最高1.7毫米/秒的速度同时从移动的草履虫中获取有意义的数据。
