title: CellProfiler Tracer: exploring and validating high-throughput, time-lapse microscopy image data.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Time-lapse analysis of cellular images is an important and growing need in biology. Algorithms for cell tracking are widely available; what researchers have been missing is a single open-source software package to visualize standard tracking output (from software like CellProfiler) in a way that allows convenient assessment of track quality, especially for researchers tuning tracking parameters for high-content time-lapse experiments. This makes quality assessment and algorithm adjustment a substantial challenge, particularly when dealing with hundreds of time-lapse movies collected in a high-throughput manner.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We present CellProfiler Tracer, a free and open-source tool that complements the object tracking functionality of the CellProfiler biological image analysis package. Tracer allows multi-parametric morphological data to be visualized on object tracks, providing visualizations that have already been validated within the scientific community for time-lapse experiments, and combining them with simple graph-based measures for highlighting possible tracking artifacts.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  CellProfiler Tracer is a useful, free tool for inspection and quality control of object tracking data, available from http://www.cellprofiler.org/tracer/.
authors.affiliation: Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 415 Main St, Cambridge, MA, 02142, USA. mbray@broadinstitute.org.
authors.forename: Mark-Anthony
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Bray
authors.affiliation: Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 415 Main St, Cambridge, MA, 02142, USA. anne@broadinstitute.org.
authors.forename: Anne E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Carpenter
mesh_terms: D058948:Cell Tracking / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D061986:MCF-7 Cells; D008853:Microscopy / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software; D059008:Time-Lapse Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D014584:User-Computer Interface