SpindlesTracker: An Automatic and Low-Cost Labeled Workflow for Spindle Analysis

作者：Zhongzhong Li, Yanze Jian, Jiatong Hu, Chuanmin Zhang, Xuechun Meng, Ji Liu · 发表于：IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1109/jbhi.2023.3281454 · 被引用次数：3 · 研究领域：Advanced Image and Video Retrieval Techniques、Advanced Neural Network Applications、AI in cancer detection

Quantitative analysis of spindle dynamics in mitosis through fluorescence microscopy requires tracking spindle elongation in noisy image sequences. Deterministic methods, which use typical microtubule detection and tracking methods, perform poorly in the sophisticated background of spindles. In addition, the expensive data labeling cost also limits the application of machine learning in this field. Here we present a fully automatic and low-cost labeled workflow that efficiently analyzes the dynamic spindle mechanism of time-lapse images, called SpindlesTracker. In this workflow, we design a network named YOLOX-SP which can accurately detect the location and endpoint of each spindle under box-level data supervision. We then optimize the algorithm SORT and MCP for spindle's tracking and skeletonization. As there was no publicly available dataset, we annotated a S.pombe dataset that was entirely acquired from the real world for both training and evaluation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that SpindlesTracker achieves excellent performance in all aspects, while reducing label costs by 60%. Specifically, it achieves 84.1% mAP in spindle detection and over 90% accuracy in endpoint detection. Furthermore, the improved algorithm enhances tracking accuracy by 1.3% and tracking precision by 6.5%. Statistical results also indicate that the mean error of spindle length is within 1 μm. In summary, SpindlesTracker holds significant implications for the study of mitotic dynamic mechanism...