Computational Modeling of Fluorescence Loss in Photobleaching

Fluorescence loss in photobleaching (FLIP) is a modern microscopy method for visualization of transport processes in living cells. Although FLIP is widespread, an automated reliable analysis of image data is still lacking. This paper presents a framework for modeling and simulation of FLIP sequences as reaction– diffusion systems on segmented cell images. The cell geometry is extracted from microscopy images using the Chan–Vese active contours algorithm [8]. The PDE model is subsequently solved by the automated Finite Element software package FEniCS [20]. The flexibility of FEniCS allows for spatially resolved reaction diffu- sion coefficients in two (or more) spatial dimensions.