Detection and counting of "in vivo" cells to predict cell migratory potential

International audienceIn this paper, we present a work which is performed by biologists and computer scientists both. The aim of this work is to evaluate the migratory potential of cancerous cells. Cancer is characterised by primary tumour. When some cells move they create new tumours, which are called metastases. It is very important to understand this migration process in order to be able to arrest it and increase the chances of a cure. Today, biologists analyse images from different cell cultures and manually count one by one the cells present therein. It is a hard and fastidious work, so here we present some algorithms to automatically perform these tasks of detection and counting. The images that we have are very low contrasted, with a gradient of illumination, and the cells are numerous and tightly aggregated. In this paper different algorithms are evocated and results compared for about 150 images comprising more than 65,000 cells