Table 1 Summary of the main properties of the open source softwares for 4D tracking
From: Visual4DTracker: a tool to interact with 3D + t image stacks
Software | ilastik [9] | DiaTrack [8] | TrackMate [10] | Visual4DTracker (proposed) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Manual tracking | YES: after segmentation, clicking frame by frame the moving object | NO | NO | YES |
Automatic tracking | YES: it uses the Least Square, Distance association method | YES: after segmentation, it uses the Least Square Distance association method | YES: after segmentation, it uses the Least Square Distance association method | NO |
Single particle tracking | YES | NO | NO | YES |
Multiple particle simultaneous tracking | YES | YES | YES | NO |
Particle occlusion handling | YES: it is possible to manually define split events of single objects | NO | YES: it automatically searches for multiple objects split events | NO |
Pre-processing | YES (several filters) | YES (only Gaussian Filter, luminosity threshold) | NO | YES (several filters, user defined functions) |
Proof-reading | NO | NO | YES: it is only possible to load the traces and to modify the tracking parameters | YES |
Tracking processing | NO | YES: it is possible to compute kinematic parameters from the traces | NO | NO |
3D tracking visualization | NO: only 2D multiple orthogonal layers representation | NO: only 2D multiple orthogonal layers representation | NO: 2D multiple layers representation surfable in quote and frames | YES |
3D data reconstruction | YES | YES | YES | YES |
Manual tracking in 3D visualization | NO | NO | NO | YES |
User developped pre/post processing functions | NO | NO | NO: not directly, however the software is a Fiji plug-in | YES: it is possible to upload custom functions in MATLAB |
Output | File in .hdf5 format (or others) | File in .txt format trajectories and data and .eps format for the images | File in .xml format | File in .xml format |