Towards fully automated identification of vesicle-membrane fusion events in TIRF microscopy. (21st September 2009)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mele, Katarina; Vallotton, Pascal; Burchfield, James G.; James, David E.; , William E. Hughes
• Is Part Of: International journal of computer aided engineering and technology. Volume 1:Number 4(2009)
• Page Start: 502
• Page End: 515
• Publication Date: 2009-09-21
• Subjects: vesicles -- vesicle tracking -- vesicle fusion -- eGFP-phogrin -- GFP-GLUT4 -- IRAP-pHluorin -- total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy -- TIRF-M -- plasma membrane -- computer vision -- object tracking -- matched filtering -- diabetes research -- obesity research; Computer-aided engineering -- Periodicals; 620.00285
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1757-2657

Abstract

Total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRF-M) is imposing itself as the tool of choice for studying biological activity in close proximity to the plasma membrane. For example, the exquisite selectivity of TIRF-M allows monitoring the movement of GFP-tagged vesicles and their recruitment to the plasma membrane of cells. We present a novel computer vision system for automatically identifying elusive vesicle-plasma membrane fusion events. Our method is based on robust object tracking and matched filtering. It should accelerate the quantification of TIRF-M data and allow the extraction of more biological information from image data to support research in diabetes and obesity.