Biological cell tracking and lineage inference via random finite sets

Abstract

Automatic cell tracking has long been a challenging problem due to the uncertainty of cell dynamic and observation process, where detection probability and clutter rate are unknown and time-varying. This is compounded when cell lineages are also to be inferred. In this paper, we propose a novel biological cell tracking method based on the Labeled Random Finite Set (RFS) approach to study cell migration patterns. Our method tracks cells with lineage by using a Generalised Label Multi-Bernoulli (GLMB) filter with objects spawning, and a robust Cardinalised Probability Hypothesis Density (CPHD) to address unknown and time-varying detection probability and clutter rate. The proposed method is capable of quantifying the certainty level of the tracking solutions. The capability of the algorithm on population dynamic inference is demonstrated on a migration sequence of breast cancer cells.