time-series

The Fiji distribution of ImageJ comes with several manual tracking tools, two of which are particularly useful:

* _Plugins->Tracking->Manual Tracking_

* _Plugins->Tracking->Manual tracking with TrackMate_ (TrackMate is an advanced automatic tracking tool, with the option for manual editing of tracks)

The _Manual Tracking_ plugin is quick to use, intuitive and produces easy-to-understand output. TrackMate has the advantage that automatic detection and linkage can be combined with manual input.

Update sites

MtrackJ (see the component page here) can be installed via Fiji update sites. It has many shortcut keys enabled so for manually tracking many data, it will become quite efficient as you get used to the short-cut key operation.

Pre-processing

Pre-processing steps before manual tracking might include:

* denoising and/or deconvolution

* flicker and photobleaching correction, e.g. using Fiji's _Image->Adjust->Bleach Correction_

* flat-field correction, and/or bandpass (ImageJ's _Process->FFT->Bandpass filter_) according to the size of the features of interest

Image processing library for Python >The scikit-image SciKit (toolkit for SciPy) extends scipy.ndimage to provide a versatile set of image processing routines. It is written in the Python language. This SciKit is developed by the SciPy community. All contributions are most welcome!

The QuimP software from Bretschneider group is deployed as ImageJ plugin and includes model-based cell segmentation, cell outline tracking and quantification of the spatially resolved speed of protrusions and retractions. The algorithm to calculate morphological dynamics is faster compared to other approaches (e.g. Machacek and Danuser, 2006). The reference paper describes the workflow for these analyses.

Tracks a cell in a 2D video using active contours, and produces a list of ROI where intensity is measured and reported into a workbook. The cell must be first delineated with a ROI in the first image of the video.

A utility macro for the specified use of BioFormats plugin. Takes a folder of proprietary images formats (Zeiss zvi, lsm, czi or Nikon nd2) and extracts them to .tif images

The extracted images are located in a folder defined in the menu. Other options: reset spatial scales, reads ROIs, split channels, add stage position in the name.

note: The old name of the macro was "ZVI Extractor" and the data format was limited to ZVI, but the upgraded version includes more formats.

Requires Bio-Formats plugin