Methods toward in vivo measurement of zebrafish epithelial and deep cell proliferation

We present a strategy for automatic classification and density estimation of epithelial enveloping layer (EVL) and deep layer (DEL) cells, throughout zebrafish early embryonic stages. Automatic cells classification provides the bases to measure the variability of relevant parameters, such as cells density, in different classes of cells and is finalized to the estimation of effectiveness and selectivity of anticancer drug in vivo. We aim at approaching these measurements through epithelial/deep cells classification, epithelial area and thickness measurement, and density estimation from scattered points. Our procedure is based on Minimal Surfaces, Otsu clustering, Delaunay Triangulation, and Within-R cloud of points density estimation approaches. In this paper, we investigated whether the distance between nuclei and epithelial surface is sufficient to discriminate epithelial cells from deep cells. Comparisons of different density estimators, experimental results, and extensively accuracy measurements are included. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.