@article{86226,
  keywords = {Animals, gastrulation, Body Patterning, Software, Drosophila melanogaster, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Epithelial Cells, Cell Shape, Epithelium, Cell Tracking},
  author = {Zia Khan and Yu-Chiun Wang and Eric Wieschaus and Matthias Kaschube},
  title = {Quantitative 4D analyses of epithelial folding during Drosophila gastrulation.},
  abstract = { Understanding the cellular and mechanical processes that underlie the shape changes of individual cells and their collective behaviors in a tissue during dynamic and complex morphogenetic events is currently one of the major frontiers in developmental biology. The advent of high-speed time-lapse microscopy and its use in monitoring the cellular events in fluorescently labeled developing organisms demonstrate tremendous promise in establishing detailed descriptions of these events and could potentially provide a foundation for subsequent hypothesis-driven research strategies. However, obtaining quantitative measurements of dynamic shapes and behaviors of cells and tissues in a rapidly developing metazoan embryo using time-lapse 3D microscopy remains technically challenging, with the main hurdle being the shortage of robust imaging processing and analysis tools. We have developed EDGE4D, a software tool for segmenting and tracking membrane-labeled cells using multi-photon microscopy data. Our results demonstrate that EDGE4D enables quantification of the dynamics of cell shape changes, cell interfaces and neighbor relations at single-cell resolution during a complex epithelial folding event in the early Drosophila embryo. We expect this tool to be broadly useful for the analysis of epithelial cell geometries and movements in a wide variety of developmental contexts. },
  year = {2014},
  journal = {Development},
  volume = {141},
  pages = {2895-900},
  month = {07/2014},
  issn = {1477-9129},
  doi = {10.1242/dev.107730},
  language = {eng},
}