TACTICS

TACTICS performs time-lapse microscopy image analysis in MATLAB to quantify and analyze dynamic cellular behaviors, including tracking, fluorescence ratiometric measurements, and cell pedigree analysis for high-content studies of non-adherent cells such as hematopoietic cells.

Key Features:

• Quality Assessment: Links analytical endpoints back to their original image positions to enable validation of analysis results.
• Massively Parallel Analysis: Supports massively parallel processing to enable flow cytometry-like assessments and exploration of parameter relationships within image sub-populations.
• User-Controlled Tracking: Allows definition and restriction of regions of interest for tracking and analysis.
• Manual Correction: Provides mechanisms to adjust or override automated tracking and analysis results.
• Post-Tracking Analysis: Computes and reports post-tracking outputs linked to original images, including cell pedigrees and normalized polarization ratios from fluorescence ratiometric measurements.

Scientific Applications:

• High-content time-lapse imaging: Quantification of dynamic behaviors in non-adherent cells, including hematopoietic cells, in longitudinal microscopy datasets.
• Population-level analysis: Flow cytometry-like exploration of complex relationships between parameters across image-derived sub-populations.
• Fluorescence ratiometric analysis: Calculation and analysis of normalized polarization ratios and cell pedigrees derived from ratiometric fluorescence measurements.

Methodology:

Implemented as a MATLAB toolbox with massively parallel processing, explicit linking of analytical endpoints to original image positions, tracking with user-defined regions of interest, manual correction of automated results, and post-tracking computation of normalized polarization ratios and cell pedigrees.