Can Voronoi diagram model cell geometries in early sea-urchin embryogenesis ?

5th IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging, Paris, FRANCE, MAY 14-17, 2008International audienceWe test the hypothesis that cell membranes in early sea- urchin embryos can be modeled as a Voronoi diagram from nuclei centers. In order to obtain a model of the cell geometry against which to test our Voronoi model hypothesis, we developed a viscous watershed framework that allows segmenting 3D images of living sea-urchin embryos obtained by biphoton laser scanning microscopy. Measurements of the differences between segmented cells and the Voronoi model, show an interesting high correlation that can serve for developing more accurate methods of segmentation and modelling cell geometries