Author/Editor     Sevšek, F; Gomišček, G
Title     Shape determination of attached fluctuating phospholipid vesicles
Type     članek
Source     Comput Methods Programs Biomed
Vol. and No.     Letnik 73
Publication year     2004
Volume     str. 189-94
Language     eng
Abstract     A method to determine the shapes of a thermally fluctuating phospholipid vesicle is described. The vesicle that was attached at one point to a glass plate was submitted to a flow. It was observed by an inverted optical microscope using phase contrast technique. A large number of consecutive video images were digitised at different flow velocities and stored on computer disk. They were off-line binarised using the global average value as a threshold. The vesicle outlines were determined by a contour following procedure based on the maze walking algorithm. They were described in terms of Fourier coefficients, which were calculated by the least square fitting of the contour points using normal equations and LU matrix decomposition. This method, which was the basis for the determination of the membrane bending modulus, was throughly tested and it proved to be robust and efficient.
Descriptors     PHOSPHOLIPIDS
PARTICLE SIZE
MICROSCOPY, VIDEO
MICROSCOPY, PHASE-CONTRAST
IMAGE PROCESSING, COMPUTER-ASSISTED
FOURIER ANALYSIS