Fluorescence Microscopy Image Processing and Visualization for Analyzing Cell Kinematics, Proliferation and Attachment in Mouse Embryonic Stem Cell Culture

We present an automatic image processing and visualization method to quantitatively analyze kinematics, proliferation and attachment of mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells using time-series confocal time-lapse fluorescence microscopy images. An automatic method is presented to determine the 3D boundary of each cell nucleus in each cell colony. The cells and colonies are then tracked among the time-series images to determine the kinematics, proliferation and attachment of the cells and colonies. The cells and colonies are visualized through a 3D interface, and the kinematics, proliferation and attachment are illustrated in tree structures. The information of cell kinematics, proliferation and attachment indicates how the culturing conditions and cell positions affect the kinematics, proliferation and attachment. The implementation results show that the automatic method can successfully analyze the cell kinematics, proliferation and attachment, thereby yield a potential tool for helping mES cell culture.