Fractal analysis as a tool for a fast and effective characterization of cell morphology

Fractal dimension (D) is an efficient criterion to characterize morphology complexity of objects. From this point of view, the authors propose to quantify the shape complexity of living cells by using fractal dimension. Here, they study the morphology of glial cells whose stages of maturation are defined in an objective manner by antigenic markers. The authors correlate the stage of maturation with the fractal dimension of the cell. Four kinds of fractal dimensions were used for individual cells: the box counting dimension, the Richardson dimension, the Minkowski dimension and the Sholl dimension. The authors' results show that the changes of fractal dimension during differentiation follow the well known pattern of markers expression by these cells. As an alternative approach to the immunocytochemical calibration, the computation of D allows an easy and fast classification of the developmental stage of isolated living cells prior to studying their physiological characteristics.