Parameters and Driving Force Estimation of Cell Motility via Expectation-Maximization (EM) Approach

Motility is an important property of immune system cells. To describe cell motility, we use a continuous stochastic process and estimate its parameters and driving force based on a maximum likelihood approach. In order to improve the convergence of the maximization procedure, we use expectation-maximization (EM) iterations. The iterations include numerical maximization and the Kalman filter. To illustrate the method, we use cell tracks obtained from the intravital video microscopy of a zebrafish embryo.