Computer assisted analysis of axonal transport velocities from kymographs

A large number of research groups across the world image and study the transport of various neuronal organelles of model organisms like C.elegans due to its clinical significance. These studies mainly characterize the transport parameters such as flux (number of moving particles), velocity, pause time and pause frequency. The parameters are obtained from spatio-temporal maps called kymographs developed from time-lapse confocal microscopy movies of neurons. Due to in vivo nature of imaging, the kymographs developed have poor signal quality which makes their analysis difficult. We present a novel method to calculate the velocity of axonal transport. The method involves information fusion using a probabilistic framework followed by computer assisted extraction of spatially continuous structures. The method significantly reduces user effort and time.