Macrophage Tracking Using the Hungarian Algorithm in Time Lapse MR Images

Immune cells deeply affect human health, however, it has not been investigated well due to difficulty of observing immune cells in vivo. The recent study enables us to acquire single Macrophage, which is the representative cell of immune cells, in vivo using 11.7 T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). To quantify the kinematics of macrophages, it requires detection and tracking macrophages in MR image. The kinematic analysis will help researchers to investigate the mechanism of autoimmune diseases. This paper proposes an automated single macrophage tracking method in mouse brain 11.7 T time-lapse MR images. The method detects macrophages using background subtraction algorithm, and tracks macrophages using the Hungarian algorithm. The results showed that the proposed method detected and tracked macrophages in MR images successfully.