Tracking in Molecular Bioimaging

E. Meijering, I. Smal, G. Danuser

IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, vol. 23, no. 3, May 2006, pp. 46-53

The purpose of this article is to stimulate the application of more advanced computer vision techniques to tracking in biological molecular imaging, by surveying the literature and sketching the current state of affairs in the field for a signal and image processing audience. After describing the basic principles of visualizing molecular dynamics in living cells and giving some examples of biological molecular dynamics studies, we summarize the problems and limitations intrinsic to imaging at this scale. Then we discuss the main ingredients of the commonly used tracking paradigm and subsequently reconsider its competence by comparing it to certain aspects of visual motion perception in human beings, keeping in mind the complexity and variability of biological image data. We conclude by summarizing the main points of attention for future research and the challenges that lie ahead.

Download preprint.

Download from publisher.

Copyright © 2006 by the authors. Published version © 2006 by IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint or republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works, must be obtained from the copyright holder.