New method of 3D tracking of in vitro cells by digital holographic microscopyOptical Methods for Inspection, Characterization, and Imaging of Biomaterials

We propose a new strategy of three-dimensional (3D) tracking of living cells by digital holographic microscopy based on the morphological changes of cells during the migration. The typical strategy adopted in digital holography for the tracking of living cells consists into compute the 3D position dividing the calculation process into two parts: the estimation of the focal plane on the amplitude reconstruction of the digital holograms and the estimation of the transverse coordinates by the phase reconstruction of digital holograms computed at distance equal to the estimated focal plane. We propose to use an approximation of the Tamura coefficient, as image contrast measure, for the estimation of the focal plane and a new morphological operator, that is called minimum boundary filter (MBF), from which we compute the transverse coordinates. A comparison with other 3D tracking methods is accomplished.