Bioinformatics Institute, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore 138671, Republic of Singapore.
Cytometry A. 2012 Jan;81(1):52-64. doi: 10.1002/cyto.a.21164. Epub 2011 Nov 8.
Drosophila embryogenesis is an established model to investigate mechanisms and genes related to cell divisions in an intact multicellular organism. Progression through the cell cycle phases can be monitored in vivo using fluorescently labeled fusion proteins and time-lapse microscopy. To measure cellular properties in microscopic images, accurate and fast image segmentation methods are a critical prerequisite. To quantify static and dynamic features of interphase nuclei and mitotic chromosomes, we developed a three-dimensional (3D) segmentation method based on multiple level sets. We tested our method on 3D time-series images of live embryos expressing histone-2Av-green fluorescence protein. Our method is robust to low signal-to-noise ratios inherent to high-speed imaging, fluorescent signals in the cytoplasm, and dynamic changes of shape and texture. Comparisons with manual ground-truth segmentations showed that our method achieves more than 90% accuracy on the object as well as voxel levels and performs consistently throughout all cell cycle phases and developmental stages from syncytial blastoderm to postblastoderm mitotic domains.
果蝇胚胎发生是一个成熟的模型，用于研究在完整的多细胞生物体中与细胞分裂相关的机制和基因。可以使用荧光标记融合蛋白和延时显微镜在体内监测细胞周期各阶段的进展。为了在显微镜图像中测量细胞特性，准确和快速的图像分割方法是一个关键的先决条件。为了量化间核和有丝分裂染色体的静态和动态特征，我们开发了一种基于多个水平集的三维（3D）分割方法。我们在表达组蛋白-2Av-绿色荧光蛋白的活胚胎的 3D 时间序列图像上测试了我们的方法。我们的方法对高速成像固有的低信噪比、细胞质中的荧光信号以及形状和纹理的动态变化具有鲁棒性。与手动地面真实分割的比较表明，我们的方法在对象和体素级别上的准确率超过 90%，并且在整个细胞周期阶段和从合胞胚层到后胚层有丝分裂区域的所有发育阶段都表现一致。
