Quantification of cell, actin, and nuclear DNA morphology with high-throughput microscopy and CalMorph

Abstract

Automated image acquisition and processing systems have been developed to quantitatively describe yeast cell morphology. These systems are superior to the preceding qualitative methods in terms of reproducibility, as they completely avoid subjective recognition of images. Because high-throughput microscopy has enabled rapid production of numerous cellular images, reinforcement of high-performance and high-throughput automated image-processing techniques has been in increasing demand in the field of biology. This protocol describes how to use a high-throughput microscope in conjunction with the image-processing software CalMorph, which outputs more than 500 morphological parameters, for quantification of cell, actin, and nuclear DNA morphology.