Cell motility is an integral part of a diverse set of biological processes. The quest formathematical models of cell motility has prompted the development of automated approachesfor gathering quantitative data on cell morphology, and the distribution of molecularplayers involved in cell motility. Here we review recent approaches for quantifying cellmotility, including automated cell segmentation and tracking. Secondly, we present our ownnovel method for tracking cell boundaries of moving cells, the Electrostatic ContourMigration Method (ECMM), as an alternative to the generally accepted level set method(LSM). ECMM smoothly tracks regions of the cell boundary over time to compute localmembrane displacements using the simple underlying concept of electrostatics. It offerssubstantial speed increases and reduced computational overheads in comparison to the LSM.We conclude with general considerations regarding boundary tracking in the context ofmathematical modelling.
