Automatic detection of large dense-core vesicles in secretory cells and statistical analysis of their intracellular distribution.

Analyzing the morphological appearance and the spatial distribution of large dense-core vesicles (granules) in the cell cytoplasm is central to the understanding of regulated exocytosis. This paper is concerned with the automatic detection of granules and the statistical analysis of their spatial locations in different cell groups. We model the locations of granules of a given cell as a realization of a finite spatial point process and the point patterns associated with the cell groups as replicated point patterns of different spatial point processes. First, an algorithm to segment the granules using electron microscopy images is proposed. Second, the relative locations of the granules with…