Visualization and Data Analysis for Intracellular Transport using Computer Vision Techniques

Internalization of nanoparticles into intracellular area includes key information in biomedical field, such as cell signal pathway and drug delivery. Although the tracking of the individual nanoparticles in the cytoplasmic area has revealed the movement of the target in terms of single-particle level, the whole cell-level study is fundamental in order to efficiently acquire a large dataset of intracellular transport. In the present study, visualization and data analysis methods for understanding the entire cell-level intracellular transport in a living cell is suggested, by applying computer vision techniques to the cell images collected on the camera image sensor. Using the changes in the optical flow of the quantum dot-labeled vesicles for the entire intracellular area, our method showed the possibility of the time series analysis of vesicle movement related to the transport by two different types of molecular motors, dynein and kinesin.