Some Statistical Techniques for Comparing Cell Colonies Using Shape

Biological activity within a cell is important for numerous reasons, the medical reason being one of many. One response to activity that can be visualized is a cell's morphology. Using fluorescence microscopy, cell shapes can be imaged. A population of identical cells exhibits a distribution of shape responses. In this brief introduction, I will discuss several statistical techniques that may be useful in comparing shape populations. Simple one dimensional discriptors will be discussed, as well as, more advanced methods based on the Fourier transform and the Procrustes metric.