Detection of Velocity and Diffusion Coefficient Change Points in Single-Particle Trajectories

Shuhui Yin, Nancy Song, Haw Yang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

The position-time trajectory of a biological subject moving in a complex environment contains rich information about how it interacts with the local setting. Whether the subject be an animal or an intracellular endosomal vesicle, the two primary modes of biological locomotion are directional movement and random walk, respectively characterized by velocity and diffusion coefficient. This contribution introduces a method to quantitatively divide a single-particle trajectory into segments that exhibit changes in the diffusion coefficient, velocity, or both. With the determination of these two physical parameters given by the maximum likelihood estimators, the relative precisions are given as explicit functions of the number of data points and total trajectory time. The method is based on rigorous statistical tests and does not require any presumed kinetics scheme. Results of extensive characterizations, extensions to 2D and 3D trajectories, and applications to common scenarios are also discussed.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)217-229
Number of pages13
JournalBiophysical Journal
Volume115
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 17 2018

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Biophysics

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