quot

A simple GUI to compare spot detection and tracking methods in single molecule tracking data.

Install

1. Clone the repository:

    git clone https://github.com/alecheckert/quot.git

2. Create a conda environment for quot. (If you don't already have it, you'll need conda: https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html.) Navigate to the top-level quot directory and run

    conda env create -f quot_env.yml

3. Switch to the quot_env environment:

    conda activate quot_env

4. Finally, install the quot package. From the top-level quot directory, run

    python setup.py develop

quot is still in active development. The develop option will track changes in the source files as new versions become available.

Alternative install with pip

In the future quot will be installable with pip alone. This functionality is currently on the quot_env_v2 branch. To install via this method, do:

  git clone https://github.com/alecheckert/quot.git
  git checkout quot_env_v2
  cd quot
  # Make a new venv or something here
  pip install -e .

Run the quot GUI

The easiest way to explore SPT options in quot is to use the GUI. To launch the GUI, first switch to the quot environment:

    conda activate quot_env

Then start the main GUI with

    quot main

To get additional usage information, use

    quot --help

Other quot commands are mostly shortcuts to lower-level GUIs. For example, to run the filtering/detection module on a specific file, do

    quot detect samples/sample_movie.tif

Run localization and tracking with quot

quot performs single molecule tracking with five steps:

1. Read a frame from an image file
2. (Optional) Filter the frame to remove background
3. Find spots in the frame
4. Localize spots to subpixel resolution
5. Reconnect spots into trajectories

Exactly how each step is performed can be specified with a config file. quot uses Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language (TOML) format.

An example SPT movie and config file are in the quot/samples directory. To run the example, navigate to the quot/samples directory and run

    quot-track sample_movie.tif sample_config.toml -o sample_trajs.csv

The result should be saved to samples/sample_trajs.csv.

quot-track can also be used for batch tracking on directories with many image files. For example, suppose we have the following directory structure:

  -> my_config.toml
  -> directory_with_nd2_files
     -> file_1.nd2
     -> file_2.nd2 
     -> file_3.nd2

To run batch tracking on all of the files in directory_with_nd2_files, you could do:

    quot-track directory_with_nd2_files my_config.toml -o output_directory -n 3

The resulting .csv files will be placed in output_directory and will be named based on their parent ND2 file. The -n (equivalently, --n_threads) argument specifies how many threads to run in parallel.

As always, to get a full list of the options to quot-track, use

    quot-track --help

Finding external hard drives

Some users have reported trouble finding external hard drives with the quot file selection dialogs. If this happens, try the following:

1. Look under /Volumes (if using macOS).
2. If the hard drive is not visible under /Volumes, navigate to the hard drive in the Terminal and launch an instance of the quot GUI on an image file there (for instance, quot image some_random_file.nd2). The file should be stored on the hard drive. On macOS Catalina, this triggers a permissions dialog that makes the hard drive subsequentialy visible in the quot file dialog selections.

If you continue to have trouble finding the external hard drives, contact [email protected].