Extracting cell and fibre orientation from microscopic images: Computational methods and tools

Abstract

Orientation of cell and its actin fibres dictate various properties of the cell and its associated tissue including morphology, cell migration and response of cell to external stimuli. While the vital role of cell and actin fibre orientation has been demonstrated in various studies and across many cell-types, extracting this information from microscopy images is a challenging task. Although several methods have been developed to quantify alignment of a cell and its actin fibres from experimental images, all of them differ at one step or the other. We highlight the importance of orientation of cell and associated fibres and present a generic scheme of various approaches to assimilate the widely used methods. We have presented a systematic approach to determine cell and fibre orientation. The study will improve our understanding of the core processes and will also help in development of high throughput imaging methods to extract information from experimental images.