abstract |
Methods and apparatus are provided for the automated analysis of images of living cells acquired by time-lapse microscopy. The new methods and apparatus can be used for the segmentation, classification and tracking of individual cells in a cell population, and for the extraction of biologically significant features from the cell images. Based upon certain extracted features, the inventive image analysis methods can characterize a cell as mitotic or interphase and/or can classify a cell into one of the following mitotic phases: prophase, metaphase, arrested metaphase, and anaphase with high accuracy. |