Katsaggelos & Wang Develop Pipeline for Studying Normal Cell Behavior in Fruit Flies

The surprising discovery is utilized in high-throughput accurate segmentation of cells present in confocal microscopy images.

Prof. Aggelos Katsaggelos & Bao Wang

Prof. Aggelos Katsaggelos and EECS Alum Bao Wang (PhD 15', Advised by Prof. Katsaggelos) have developed a pipeline for high-throughput accurate segmentation of cells present in confocal microscopy images. The pipeline was used to study normal cell behavior in the developing eye of the fruit fly.

It led to a surprising discovery as described in their publication, titled, “Dynamics and Heterogeneity of a Fate Determinant During Transition Towards Cell Differentiation.” The publications authors are: N. Peláez, A. Gavalda-Miralles, B. Wang, H. T.  Navarro, H. Gudjonson, I. Rebay, A. R.  Dinner, A. K. Katsaggelos, L. AN Amaral, R. Carhtew, eLIFE, Nov. 2015.

At Northwestern, Wang joined Prof. Katsaggelos's Image and Video Processing Laboratory (IVPL) in 2010, where he accrued 5 years of experiences in developing image processing softwares for clients from various backgrounds. His main research interests included image segmentation, super-resolution, blind de-convolution, the primary goal of his research is to help biologists improve the processing of large amounts of data. Wang is currently enjoying his full time engineering role at Skype, Microsoft, where he hopes to improve user experiences throughout the world.

Read more about their research:

http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2016/01/researchers-pinpoint-place-where-cancer-cells-may-begin.html

McCormick News Article