Journal: bioRxiv
Article Title: Data-driven simulations elucidate how lymphocyte motility behaviors drive cell-cell interactions within germinal centers
doi: 10.1101/2025.08.05.668700
Figure Lengend Snippet: From the intravital microscopy data, we segmented and tracked 3D trajectories for individual GCBs and Tfhs. Each trajectory comprised the (x,y,z) coordinates of a single cell in 20 consecutive frames acquired at 30-second intervals. For each experimental trajectory, we decomposed the trajectory into primary, secondary, and tertiary axes of movement. For the 3D trajectory, we quantified statistical features of the angular distribution. For the 3D trajectory and the trajectory decomposition, we quantified the following features: net distance and progressivity; statistical features of the displacement distribution; and the mean squared displacement at intervals of one, two, and three frames (30 seconds, 1-minute, and 1.5-minutes, respectively). After extracting these features, we projected the multi-dimensional feature space into a UMAP embedding and applied unsupervised clustering to identify motility behaviors. We then examined the behavior of each motility cluster. Finally, we eliminated possible outlier trajectories, and repeated step on the cleaned dataset.
Article Snippet: To extract single-cell trajectories from each intravital time-lapse microscopy image set, IMARIS software was used to segment cells and track individual trajectories.
Techniques: Intravital Microscopy