We developed a software for the automated detection and analysis of giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) on fluorescent microscopy images. The detection algorithm is based on the Circular Hough Transformation, a powerful method to detect circles. The software is suited to characterize in detail protein binding to membranes and mechanisms of membrane permeabilization at the single vesicle level. Concretely, it can be used to quantify the degree of permeabilization, the filling kinetics, protein binding to the membrane as well as the pore size and stability of the permeabilized state of individual vesicles using multiframe images or movies as input.
For more information, please see Hermann et al., Bioinformatics (2014).
The software is implemented in Matlab and requires at least Matlab R2012b including Image Processing Toolbox and Signal Processing Toolbox. Additionally, a standalone version for Windows7 64 bit is available, designed to run the program without Matlab. Before using the standalone tool, make sure you have the MCRInstaller R2013b for Windows7 64 bit installed (otherwise download it here). If you have any questions, please contact me via eduard.hermannspam prevention@ifib.uni-tuebingen.de.
