Programmed cell death “apoptosis” was first identified by changes in cell morphology. Despite the rise of biochemical methods to quantify apoptosis, some authors argue that morphological methods provide a more accurate representation of cell cycle activity. Current morphological techniques are: 1) time consuming, 2) the identification of apoptotic cells is subject to the discretion of the investigator, and 3) biochemical markers of apoptosis are limited because they only measure a single time point in the apoptotic process and are unable to give the investigator information that occurs over the course of the apoptosis. A method for a quantitative morphological approach is described with the potential to overcome the above three limitations.

Apoptosis occurs in an orderly fashion with morphological events including cell shrinkage, the breakdown of DNA into characteristic lengths, orderly condensation of the nucleus, and the production of membrane “blebbs” which are phagocytosed by surrounding cells. Our proposed image processing-based setup consists of: 1) an experimental setup that allows assessing apoptosis over the entire process and not just a snapshot at single point in time, 2) an automatic approach for the identification of apoptosis using images, and 3) a mathematical quantitative approach for the assessment of cell apoptosis.