title: Robust quantitative scratch assay.
abstract: The wound healing assay (or scratch assay) is a technique frequently used to quantify the dependence of cell motility-a central process in tissue repair and evolution of disease-subject to various treatments conditions. However processing the resulting data is a laborious task due its high throughput and variability across images. This Robust Quantitative Scratch Assay algorithm introduced statistical outputs where migration rates are estimated, cellular behaviour is distinguished and outliers are identified among groups of unique experimental conditions. Furthermore, the RQSA decreased measurement errors and increased accuracy in the wound boundary at comparable processing times compared to previously developed method (TScratch).
  
  
  
  The RQSA is freely available at: http://ophid.utoronto.ca/RQSA/RQSA_Scripts.zip The image sets used for training and validation and results are available at: (http://ophid.utoronto.ca/RQSA/trainingSet.zip, http://ophid.utoronto.ca/RQSA/validationSet.zip, http://ophid.utoronto.ca/RQSA/ValidationSetResults.zip, http://ophid.utoronto.ca/RQSA/ValidationSet_H1975.zip, http://ophid.utoronto.ca/RQSA/ValidationSet_H1975Results.zip, http://ophid.utoronto.ca/RQSA/RobustnessSet.zip, http://ophid.utoronto.ca/RQSA/RobustnessSet.zip). Supplementary Material is provided for detailed description of the development of the RQSA.
  
  
  
  juris@ai.utoronto.ca
  
  
  
  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vargas
authors.affiliation: Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Techna, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Angeli
authors.affiliation: Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Techna, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pastrello
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Rosanne
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: McQuaid
authors.affiliation: Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Han
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jurisicova
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Techna, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Jurisica
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D054443:Cell Migration Assays; D006801:Humans; D014945:Wound Healing