Emma Lejeune

Extracting Average Region Strain Signatures from Cardiac Microtissue

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The goal of this project is to create highly accessible Python + Jupyter Notebook based software and software tutorials for extracting spatially distributed strain timeseries from movies of beating cardiac microtissue.

LABORATORY MENTOR
Hiba Kobeissi

RESEARCH GOALS
– Segment microtissue from experimental images (i.e., write code to automatically generate a binary mask that covers just the microtissue component of a domain)
– Divide each mask into approx 12 sub-domains
– Use an optical flow algorithm to track marker points and compute strain within each sub-domain
– Compute peak strain in each sub-domain
– Visualize the results
– Create a Jupyter Notebook tutorial so that people with limited programming experience can use the code

LEARNING GOALS
– Experience with image analysis in Python
– Exposure to basic mechanics/kinematics concepts
– Experience with scientific computing
– Experience with presenting software so that it can be used by others
– Experience with scientific communication

Learn more about Assistant Professor Lejeune on her faculty page.