TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hansen, Jan N
AU  - Brückner, Matthias
AU  - Pietrowski, Marie J
AU  - Jikeli, Jan F
AU  - Plescher, Monika
AU  - Beckert, Hannes
AU  - Schnaars, Mareike
AU  - Fülle, Lorenz
AU  - Reitmeier, Katharina
AU  - Langmann, Thomas
AU  - Förster, Irmgard
AU  - Boche, Delphine
AU  - Petzold, Gabor C
AU  - Halle, Annett
TI  - MotiQ: an open-source toolbox to quantify the cell motility and morphology of microglia.
JO  - Molecular biology of the cell
VL  - 33
IS  - 11
SN  - 1044-2030
CY  - Bethesda, Md.
PB  - American Society for Cell Biology
M1  - DZNE-2022-01282
SP  - ar99
PY  - 2022
AB  - Microglia are the primary resident innate immune cells of the central nervous system (CNS). They possess branched, motile cell processes that are important for their cellular functions. To study the pathways that control microglial morphology and motility under physiological and disease conditions, it is necessary to quantify microglial morphology and motility precisely and reliably. Several image analysis approaches are available for the quantification of microglial morphology and motility. However, they are either not automated, not freely accessible, and/or limited in the number of morphology and motility parameters that can be assessed. Thus, we have developed MotiQ, an open-source, freely accessible software for automated quantification of microglial motility and morphology. MotiQ allows quantification of a diverse set of cellular motility and morphology parameters, including the parameters that have become gold standard in the microglia field. We demonstrate that MotiQ can be applied to in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro data from confocal, epifluorescence, or two-photon microscopy and we compare its results to other analysis approaches. We suggest MotiQ as a versatile and customizable tool to study microglia. 
KW  - Cell Movement: physiology
KW  - Microglia: metabolism
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C2  - pmc:PMC9582802
C6  - pmid:35731557
DO  - DOI:10.1091/mbc.E21-11-0585
UR  - https://pub.dzne.de/record/164838
ER  -