Systematic detection of subtle spatio–temporal patterns in time‐lapse imaging: I. Mitosis

A recent article on syncytial nuclear divisions in early embryos of Drosophila melanogaster presented evidence that the complex spatio–temporal data obtained from time‐lapse images were patterned , contrary to previous suggestions based on preliminary observations. However, the reasoning that led to the hypothesis of patterning was informal and unsystematic. Here, we propose a systematic and computerized method for detecting subtle spatio–temporal mitotic patterns, under a general formulation of mitosis as three‐dimensional asynchronous processes, of which the earlier data are a special case. The approach involves a rather elaborate application of the concept of permutation test from nonparametric statistics. Far from being limited to mitotic processes, the approach holds general promise for other classes of mass, time‐lapse imaging phenomena in cell and developmental biology, such as migration and cell death.