The Goal: Improve analysis of actin
fiber direction in mouse heart cells
Moore Good Ideas
Dr. Yoshigi loved the result of directional staining, but David recognized that there was still one more innovative analysis needed before the pretty qualitative picture could be turned into real quantitative data. What would happen when Dr. Yoshigi tried to find the average direction of the fibers for a cell? The gradient vectors that were in opposite directions would cancel each other out, and the result would always be zero!
Before you take the average, you need to map your data from gradient vectors that color like the image to the left to something else that maps like the image to the right where the two sides of each fiber give the same vector. Once you know that that’s the result you want, it’s really easy to do mathematically: you just square the numbers before you average them.
With innovative analysis and presentation from Moore Good Ideas, Inc., Dr. Yoshigi went from the approximate results he had to the real quantitative data he wanted and beautiful qualitative images he never expected.
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