Pattern analysis of stem cell growth dynamics in the shoot apex of arabidopsis

The Shoot Apical Meristem (SAM) is made of stem cells that are responsible for all above ground plant structures. Differentiating cells in the development of SAM form primordia. Primordia develop to become various plant organs. Understanding the growth dynamics of primordia is critical to understanding the developmental dynamics of the entire SAM. We present a method for performing quantitative analysis of primordia development in model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. A contour based approach is used to detect and isolate individual primordia from 3D live imaging data. Regions of growth are detected by analyzing eigenvalues of curvature covariance matrices. After primordia detection and isolation, a Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) Algorithm is applied to compute the rate of growth. Results show the successful use of our method to quantitatively analyze primordial growth.