How Complex Is Cancer Intracellular Signaling Space in FIB-SEM Images?

How cell regulates its intracellular features to optimize their signaling pathways is still far from understanding. Recent advancement in microscopy imaging of the structure of cell organelles enables biomedical researchers to study cell morphology in great detail to discover the pathogeneses of diseases by information obtained at molecular level. A particular interest is to quantify the complexity of the spatial content of the intracellular space captured by the combination of focused ion beam (FIB) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) imaging systems. Such quantitative measure of the complexity of organelles is expected to be a useful tool for benchmarking biological simulations of cancers and controlling disease-specific drug effects. In this paper, for the first time nonlinear dynamical models are utilized to investigate the structural characteristics of intracellular space using FIB-SEM technology to quantify the complex architecture of cell organelles.