Monica Itzuri Delgado Carillo

New techniques to analyze two-photon imaging data from T cells of the immune system moving within living tissue. 

Two-photon microscopy is a powerful technique that allows individual cells to be tracked as they move within live tissues. In collaboration with experimental researchers at Glasgow University, we will develop new techniques to analyze two-photon imaging data acquired from T cells of the immune system moving within living tissue. This work is a natural development of previous work of Dan Coombs and his students, where the motion of individual proteins was analyzed. Determining the behavior of an object from a time series of positions is an important area of study in mathematical biology because methods can be applied to many systems, from molecular motion to the tracked motion of large animals such as wolves, bears and elk. From a mathematical point of view, the study of cell motion will be based on a Markov model, where the underlying state of motion (directed, diffusive, etc) is hidden and must be inferred from the position time series. The project involves computational and analytical work.

 

 

Home page: www.math.ubc.ca/~itzuri