Figure 24.

Effects of blinking, or temporary disappearance of particles, present linking challenges. (a) No blinking. Three trajectories are associated with three localized points (P₁, P₂, and P₃). Motion models constrain the possible areas within which each of the localized points terminating the trajectory could have moved, but ambiguity nevertheless exists. Thus, P₁ can potentially be the terminal point for either red and yellow trajectories, and similarly for P₂. The problem can only be resolved because P₃ belongs to the blue trajectory, meaning that P₂ and P₁ must belong to the red and yellow trajectories, respectively. (b) Blinking in the red trajectory before the current frame. Because no particle was detected for the red trajectory at frame t, the potential area in which the particle may be found in frame t + 1 is correspondingly larger. However, assignment of localized points at frame t + 1 to trajectories is still resolvable. On the contrary, combinations of blinks or, alternatively, blinks lasting longer than one time frame can lead to important misassignments.³¹⁷ Adapted with permission from ref 317. Copyright 2008, Nature Publishing Group.