Time-Lapse Microscopy and Classification of in Vitro Cell Migration Using Hidden Markov Modeling

This paper describes a system for in vitro cell migration analysis. Adult neural stem/progenitor cells are studied using time-lapse microscopy and thereafter stained immunohistochemically to find and distinguish between undifferentiated glial progenitor cells and cells having differentiated into type-1 or type-2 astrocytes. The cells are automatically segmented and tracked throughout the time-lapse sequence. The evaluation showed that 88% of the cells were correctly segmented and tracked by the automatic system. Upon characterization of the cell migration by hidden Markov modeling, it was found that the motion of glial progenitor cells was random 2/3 of the time, while the type-2 astrocytes showed a directed movement 2/3 of the time. This finding indicates possibilities for cell-type specific identification and cell sorting of live cells based on specific movement patterns in individual cell populations, which will have valuable applications in neurobiological research