The first community competition designed to objectively compare the performance of particle tracking algorithms provides valuable practical information for both users and developers. Particle tracking is of key importance for quantitative analysis of intracellular dynamic processes from time-lapse microscopy image data. Because manually detecting and following large numbers of individual particles is not feasible, automated computational methods have been developed for these tasks by many groups. Aiming to perform an objective comparison of methods, we gathered the community and organized an open competition in which participating teams applied their own methods independently to a commonly defined data set including diverse scenarios. Performance was assessed using commonly defined measures. Although no single method performed best across all scenarios, the results revealed clear differences between the various approaches, leading to notable practical conclusions for users and developers.

In the developing fly wing, secreted morphogens such as Decapentaplegic (Dpp) and Wingless (Wg) form gradients of concentration providing positional information. Dpp forms a longer-range gradient than Wg. To understand how the range is controlled, we measured the four key kinetic parameters governing morphogen spreading: the production rate, the effective diffusion coefficient, the degradation rate, and the immobile fraction. The four parameters had different values for Dpp versus Wg. In addition, Dynamin-dependent endocytosis was required for spreading of Dpp, but not Wg. Thus, the cellular mechanisms of Dpp and Wingless spreading are different: Dpp spreading requires endocytic, intracellular trafficking.