Patent ID: 7050620

Claim:
A method for assaying the shape features of cells and determining whether the shape features are altered by exposure of the cells to a pharmaceutical or biological agent, comprising the steps of: (a) culturing at least two samples of a cell population, a first treated sample population being cultured in the presence of a test agent and a second untreated sample population being cultivated in the absence of the test agent, (b) generating a high-resolution image of each cell to be sampled from each of the sample populations as representative of the cultures, which image presents high contrast information in at least one contour of the cell or a portion of the cell, wherein the high contrast is generated at the cell edge or at least one or more interference contours, and the contrast is augmented by imaging processing, (c) extracting at least one contour from each cell or portion of a cell sampled from each of the sample populations, (d) extracting at least one boundary of at least one contour from each cell or portion of a cell that was sampled from each of the sample populations, (e) determining area, perimeter, and obtaining an equation for ellipse of concentration of the cell or portion of the cell and determining at least one or more variables representing shape features of the boundary or boundaries extracted from the contour or contours of one cell or portion of one cell, (f) repeating steps a-e for each cell sampled from each of the sample populations, and (g) determining whether any two populations of cells sampled, with and without exposure to test agent, differed from one another by using the values of the variables.