Estimating structural damage of the cytoskeleton by means of morphological descriptors

Direct methods (spatial differentiation), fractal analysis and spectral analysis ("spectrum enhancement") have been applied to extract morphological descriptors from images of cytoskeletal microtubules. Images had been obtained from experiments on cultured cells (rat hepatocytes). Principal components analysis has been applied to morphological descriptors. An image classifier has thus been trained to tell normal (control) microtubule structures from those treated by a given concentration of a fungicide for a given time. Validation has been performed on sets of new images of the same two classes. Then the classifier has been used to rank the morphology of microtubules treated at lower doses and to quantify structural recovery after exposure. The paper is the first account of extensive morphological classification of microtubules and paves the way to a dose-response relationship based on quantitative morphology.