3D Biological Cell Reconstruction with Multi-View Geometry

3D cell modeling is an important tool for visualizing cellular structures and events, and generating accurate data for further quantitative geometric morphological analyses on cellular structures. Current methods involve highly specialized and expensive setups as well as experts in microscopy and 3D reconstruction to produce time- and work-intensive insight into cellular events. We developed a new system that reconstructs the surface geometry of 3D cellular structures from 2D image sequences in a fast and automatic way. The system rotated cells in a microfluidic device, while their images were captured by a video camera. The multi-view geometry theory was introduced to microscopy imaging to model the imaging system and define the 3D reconstruction as an inverse problem. Finally, we successfully demonstrated the reconstruction of cellular structures in their natural state.