title: Automatic quantitative analysis of morphology of apoptotic HL-60 cells.
abstract: Morphological identification is a widespread procedure to assess the presence of apoptosis by visual inspection of the morphological characteristics or the fluorescence images. The procedure is lengthy and results are observer dependent. A quantitative automatic analysis is objective and would greatly help the routine work. We developed an image processing and segmentation method which combined the Otsu thresholding and morphological operators for apoptosis study. An automatic determination method of apoptotic stages of HL-60 cells with fluorescence images was developed. Comparison was made between normal cells, early apoptotic cells and late apoptotic cells about their geometric parameters which were defined to describe the features of cell morphology. The results demonstrated that the parameters we chose are very representative of the morphological characteristics of apoptotic cells. Significant differences exist between the cells in different stages, and automatic quantification of the differences can be achieved.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
authors.forename: Yahui
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
authors.forename: Wang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
authors.forename: Weizi
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin China.
authors.forename: Maobin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC/USA.
authors.forename: John R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Rice
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sa
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China ; Department of Radiation Oncology, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin China ; Department of Radiation Oncology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC/USA.
authors.forename: Yuanming
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Feng
keywords: apoptosis; cell morphology; quantitative analysis