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Virginia Tech

Optimization Techniques for Multi-object Detection and Tracking on Live-cell Fluorescence Microscopy Images and Their Applications

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Fluorescence microscopy is a pivotal imaging technique to visualize biological processes and has been extensively utilized in live-cell morphology analysis. Despite its utility, related object detection and tracking tasks still face challenges due to large data scales, inferior data quality, and insufficient annotations, leading to reliance on adaptive thresholding. Current adaptive thresholding approaches have two significant limitations: Firstly, they cannot handle the heteroscedasticity of image data well and result in biased outputs. Secondly, they deal with frames of time-series imaging data independently and result in inconsistent detections over time. We introduce two novel optimization techniques to address these limitations and enhance detection and tracking results in live-cell imaging. The first one, ConvexVST, is a convex optimization approach to transform heteroscedastic data into homoscedastic data, making them more tractable for subsequent analysis. The second one, Joint Thresholding, is a graph-based approach to get the optimal adaptive thresholds while maintaining temporal consistency. Our methods demonstrate superior performance across various object detection and tracking tasks. Specifically, when applied to microglia imaging data, our techniques enable the acquisition of more complete cell morphology and more accurate detection of microglia tips. Furthermore, by integrating these techniques with existing frameworks, we propose an advanced pipeline for embryonic cell detection and tracking in light-sheet microscopy images, which is streets ahead of state-of-the-art peer methods and sets a new benchmark in the field.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Philosophy
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Computer Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2024

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Wang, Mengfan
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Yu, Guoqiang
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Abbott, Amos L.
  • Wang, Yue J.
  • Lo, ShihChung Benedict
  • Gerdes, Ryan M.

Subjects

dc:subject × 4

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:41167
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/120688

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Wang, Mengfan. Optimization Techniques for Multi-object Detection and Tracking on Live-cell Fluorescence Microscopy Images and Their Applications. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 2024. https://hdl.handle.net/10919/120688