Section: Overall Objectives

Main challenges in image processing for multimodal and multidimensional microscopy

In most cases, modern microscopy in biology is characterized by a large number of dimensions that fits perfectly with the complexity of biological features: two or three spatial dimensions, at macro to nano-scales, and one temporal dimension, sometimes spectrally defined and often corresponding to one particular bio-molecular species. Dynamic microscopy is also characterized by the nature of the observable objects (cells, organelles, single molecules, ...), eventually by the large number of small size and mobile elements (chromosomes, vesicles, ...), by the complexity of the dynamic processes involving many entities or group of entities sometimes interacting, by particular phenomena of coalescence often linked to image resolution problems, finally by the association, dissociation, recomposition or constitution of those entities (such as membrane fusion and budding). Thus, the corpus of data to be considered for a comparative analysis of multiple image series acquisitions is massive (up to few GigaBytes per hour). Therefore, it becomes necessary to facilitate and rationalize the production of those multidimensional data, to improve post acquisition analysis (i.e. image processing) which are limiting factors in front of the data, and to favor the organization and the interpretation of the information associated to this data corpus. It motivates and requires innovative mathematical tools and concepts: data fusion, image registration, superresolution, data mining, life dynamics modelling, ...