Quantitative Imaging of Cytoskeletal Filaments of C17.2 Cells

The ability of cells to resist deformation, to transport intercellular cargo and to change shape during movement depends on the cytoskeletal filaments. Recent work has demonstrated that internal and external stimuli can affect these filaments and thus cellular behavior. Therefore, it is important to understand how to quantitatively extract data about the network of filaments and their changes. This research focuses on the modeling of the cytoskeletal networks to create a catalogue of them. While many cell analysis programs already exist, most are complex to use and are designed to analyze multiple types of cells and situations with limited customization in the program’s analysis. Therefore, in order to obtain a more specialized analysis, different programing languages were explored in order to develop a custom analysis method. Several custom program were developed primarily utilizing the Python image analysis library OpenCV and MATLAB. This talk will explore the actin structures in C17.2 neural stem cells and compare the different programs’ methods and capability to segment individual cells then calculate their fluorescent density.