Analysis of Cell Movement by Simultaneous Quantification of Local Membrane Displacement and Fluorescent Intensities Using Quimp2

The use of fluorescent markers in living cells has increased dramatically in the recent years. The quantitative analysis of the images requires specific analysis software. Previously, the program Quimp was launched for quantitating fluorescent intensities at the membrane or the cortex of the cell. However, Quimp is not well suited to quantitate local membrane displacement. Here we present Quimp2 that is capable of tracking membrane subregions in time, which enables the simultaneous quantification of fluorescent intensities and membrane movement. Quimp2 has two new tools, (i) conversion filters to analyze movies obtained with fluorescent, DIC and phase contrast different microscopes, and (ii) a macro that calculates the local membrane displacement and provides various options to display the results. Quimp2 is used here to investigate the molecular mechanism of cell movement by correlating the dynamics of local membrane movement with the local concentration of myosin and F-actin. Cell Motil. Cytoskeleton 66: 156-165,2009. (C) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.