Submitted by Administrator on Mon, 20/01/2014 - 18:36
At the CRUK CI, we use an automated high-content microscope to image thousands of cells and then determine the percentage of mitotic cells with the associated commercial software.
The mitotic index is the percentage of cells undergoing mitosis in a given population. This parameter is studied in cancer research to characterise various cancer cell lines.
A mitotic staining is used to easily recognise which cells are in a "mitotic state".
Then, the use of an automated microscope allows us to acquire and analyse thousands of images, in order to precisely measure the mitotic index.
We are currently using the commercial software provided with the microscope, using common image tools: threshold, Low-Pass filter, watershed. However, despite the user-friendly interface allowing an easy handling of the images and the results, this software can be limited for further analysis.
In this mitotic index-analysis, the main issues are the segmentation in a crowded environment and the inter-variability between different samples. We would be happy to discuss about any suggestion to solve those problems.