{"doi":"10.17615/f9kt-3r69","title":"Motion-enhanced, differential interference contrast (MEDIC) microscopy of moving vesicles in live cells: VE-DIC updated","abstract":"Video-enhanced DIC microscopy (VE-DIC) with background subtraction has made visible many structures and processes in living cells. In VE-DIC, the background image is stored manually by defocusing the microscope before images are acquired. We have updated and improved VE-DIC by adding automatic generation of the background image as a rolling average of the incoming image stream. Subtraction of this continuously updated 12-bit background image from the incoming 12-bit image stream provides a flat background which allows the contrast of moving objects, such as vesicles, to be strongly enhanced while suppressing stationary features such as the overall cell shape. We call our method MEDIC, for motion-enhanced DIC. By carrying out background subtraction with 12-bit images, the number of graylevels in the moving vesicles can be maximized and a single look-up table can be applied to the entire image, enhancing the contrast of all vesicles simultaneously. Contrast is increased by as much as a factor of 13. The method is illustrated with raw, background, and MEDIC images of moving vesicles within a neurite of a live PC12 cell and a live chick motorneuron.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2020,"id":141327,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9391,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":607339,"name":"G. M. HOLZWARTH","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":607340,"name":"J. C. MACOSKO","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":438954,"name":"D. B. Hill","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:17:24.429854Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}