A time-series method for automated measurement of changes in mitotic and interphase duration from time-lapse movies.

BACKGROUND: Automated time-lapse microscopy can visualize proliferation of large numbers of individual cells, enabling accurate measurement of the frequency of cell division and the duration of interphase and mitosis. However, extraction of quantitative information by manual inspection of time-lapse movies is too time-consuming to be useful for analysis of large experiments. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we present an automated time-series approach that can measure changes in the duration of mitosis and interphase in individual cells expressing fluorescent histone 2B. The approach requires analysis of only 2 features, nuclear area and average intensity. Compared to supervised learning approaches, this method reduces processing time and does not require generation of training data sets. We demonstrate that this method is as sensitive as manual analysis in identifying small changes in interphase or mitotic duration induced by drug or siRNA treatment. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This approach should facilitate automated analysis of high-throughput time-lapse data sets to identify small molecules or gene products that influence timing of cell division.