FAST, NEAREST and Flagellar Regulation

In an age where huge amounts of data can be readily produced it is increasingly important to be able to accurately and efficiently analyse large amounts of data, and to be able to use these analyses as a marker for clinical outcome. However, semen analysis in the human is currently limited to meth- ods such as sperm counting and analysis of fixed cells. To address this, we have developed and released FAST, a free-to-use package for the high-throughput detection and tracking of large numbers of beating flagella in experimental microscopy videos. This new ability to track the detailed flagellar waveform allows for more than just measurements of motility. Alongside FAST we have been developing NEAREST, an open source software enabling the rapid application of a meshless regularised Stokeslet method to solve mobility and resistance problems in Stokes flow. Combining FAST and NEAREST allows for detailed investigation into experimentally intractable quantities such as energy dissipation, disturbance of the surrounding medium and viscous stresses. Finally, we will discuss how the analysis capabilities provided by these tools can be combined, together with models of the elastic behaviour of flagella and learning algorithms to probe the secrets of flagellar regulation in swimming cells.