A boundary delimitation algorithm to approximate cell soma volumes of bipolar cells from topographical data obtained by scanning probe microscopy

Cell volume determination plays a pivotal role in the investigation of the biophysical mechanisms underlying various cellular processes. Whereas light microscopy in principle enables one to obtain three dimensional data, the reconstruction of cell volume from z-stacks is a time consuming procedure....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:BMC bioinformatics 2010-06, Vol.11 (1), p.323-323, Article 323
Main Authors: Happel, Patrick, Möller, Kerstin, Kunz, Ralf, Dietzel, Irmgard D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Animals
Cell Movement
Cell Nucleus
Cell physiology
Cell Size
Computational biology
Genetic algorithms
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Methodology
Microscopy, Scanning Probe
Oligodendroglia - cytology
Rats
Stem Cells - cytology
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Summary:Cell volume determination plays a pivotal role in the investigation of the biophysical mechanisms underlying various cellular processes. Whereas light microscopy in principle enables one to obtain three dimensional data, the reconstruction of cell volume from z-stacks is a time consuming procedure. Thus, three dimensional topographic representations of cells are easier to obtain by scanning probe microscopical measurements. We present a method of separating the cell soma volume of bipolar cells in adherent cell cultures from the contributions of the cell processes from data obtained by scanning ion conductance microscopy. Soma volume changes between successive scans obtained from the same cell can then be computed even if the cell is changing its position within the observed area. We demonstrate that the estimation of the cell volume on the basis of the width and the length of a cell may lead to erroneous determination of cell volume changes. We provide a new algorithm to repeatedly determine single cell soma volume and thus to quantify cell volume changes during cell movements occuring over a time range of hours.
ISSN:1471-2105
1471-2105
DOI:10.1186/1471-2105-11-323