简介：Inordertounderstandthedevelopmentofstemcellsintospecializedmaturecellsitisnecessarytostudythegrowthofcellsinculture.Forthispurposeitisveryusefultohaveanefficientcomputerizedcelltrackingsystem.Inthispaperaprototypesystemfortrackingneuralstemcellsinasequenceofimagesisdescribed.Inordertogetreliabletrackingresultsitisimportanttohavegoodandrobustsegmentationofthecells.Toachievethiswehaveimplementedthreelevelsofsegmentation.Theprimarylevel,appliedtoallframes,isbasedonfuzzythresholdandwatershedsegmentationofafuzzygrayweighteddistancetransformedimage.Thesecondlevel,appliedtodifficultframeswherethefirstalgorithmseemstohavefailed,isbasedonafastgeometricactivecontourmodelbasedonthelevelsetalgorithm.Finally,theautomaticsegmentationresultonthecrucialfirstframecanbeinteractivelyinspectedandcorrected.Visualinspectionandcorrectioncanalsobeappliedtootherframesbutthisisgenerallynotneeded.Forthetrackingallcellsareclassifiedintoinactive,active,dividingandclusteredcells.Differentalgorithmsareusedtodealwiththedifferentcellcategories.Aspecialbacktrackingstepisusedtoautomaticallycorrectforsomecommonerrorsthatappearintheinitialforwardtrackingprocess.