Finding cells, finding molecules, finding patterns

Many modern molecular labeling techniques result in bright point signals. Signals from molecules that are detected directly inside a cell can be captured by fluorescence microscopy. Signals representing different types of molecules may be randomly distributed in the cells or show systematic patterns indicating that the corresponding molecules have specific, non-random localizations and functions in the cell. Assessing this information requires high speed robust image segmentation followed by signal detection, and finally pattern analysis. We present and discuss this type of methods and show an example of how the distribution of different variants of mitochondrial DNA can be analyzed.