Actin filament tracking in electron tomograms of negatively stained lamellipodia using the localized radon transform

Abstract

The aim of this work was to develop a protocol for automated tracking of actin filaments in electron tomograms of lamellipodia embedded in negative stain. We show that a localized version of the Radon transform for the detection of filament directions enables three-dimensional visualizations of filament network architecture, facilitating extraction of statistical information including orientation profiles. We discuss the requirements for parameter selection set by the raw image data in the context of other, similar tracking protocols.