Nellie

Automated organelle segmentation, tracking, and hierarchical feature extraction in 2D/3D live-cell microscopy

<img src="https://github.com/aelefebv/nellie/assets/26515909/96b7a113-be60-4028-bcd9-b444bdb943f6" width="200px" align="left" /> Nature Methods (2025)

Article Link | Cite

Abstract: Cellular organelles undergo constant morphological changes and dynamic interactions that are fundamental to cell homeostasis, stress responses and disease progression. Despite their importance, quantifying organelle morphology and motility remains challenging due to their complex architectures, rapid movements and the technical limitations of existing analysis tools. Here we introduce Nellie, an automated and unbiased pipeline for segmentation, tracking and feature extraction of diverse intracellular structures. Nellie adapts to image metadata and employs hierarchical segmentation to resolve sub-organellar regions, while its radius-adaptive pattern matching enables precise motion tracking. Through a user-friendly Napari-based interface, Nellie enables comprehensive organelle analysis without coding expertise. We demonstrate Nellie’s versatility by unmixing multiple organelles from single-channel data, quantifying mitochondrial responses to ionomycin via graph autoencoders and characterizing endoplasmic reticulum networks across cell types and time points. This tool addresses a critical need in cell biology by providing accessible, automated analysis of organelle dynamics.

Nellie's pipeline and Napari plugin are both very much in early stages, therefore I highly encourage any and all feedback.

Please read the documentation

https://aelefebv.github.io/nellie/api/

Example output intermediates

https://github.com/aelefebv/nellie/assets/26515909/1df8bf1b-7116-4d19-b5fb-9658f744675b

Installation (~ 1 minute)

Notes:

• It is recommended (but usually not required) to create a new environment via venv or via conda before installing Nellie to avoid conflicts with other packages.
• May take several minutes to install.
• Choose one of the following methods, and only one!

Step 0: If you do not already have Python 3.10 or higher installed, download it via the python website:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/50b1cd4b-6df7-4f19-8db3-4dcc03388513

Option 1. If you already have Napari installed:

1. Open Napari
2. Go to Plugins > Install/Uninstall Plugins...
3. Search for Nellie and click Install
4. Make sure Nellie is updated to the latest version.
5. Restart Napari.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0d44abe5-f575-4bd4-962a-2c102faf737c

Option 2. If you don't have Nellie installed or Option 1 didn't work:

1. Open up Terminal (or Powershell on Windows)

• (optional but recommended) Create and activate a new Python or Conda environment.

2. pip install nellie:

python3 -m pip install nellie

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b63df093-e3e1-49cb-925b-7efce36b9015

Option 2a for NVIDIA GPU acceleration, optional (Windows, Linux):

To use GPU acceleration via NVIDIA GPUs, you also need to install cupy:

python3 -m pip install cupy-cudaXXx

• replace cupy-cudaXXx with the appropriate version for your CUDA version.
  • i.e. cupy-cuda11x for CUDA 11.x or cupy-cuda12x for CUDA 12.x
• if you don't have CUDA installed, go here.
• Mac Metal GPU-acceleration coming... eventually. Let me know if this is important to you!

Usage

The sample dataset shown below is in the repo if you want to play around without, and can be downloaded here.

General data preparation

• It is strongly recommended to have your data in a parsable format, such as .ome.tif, .nd2, or other raw data files from microscopes.
  • Importing into ImageJ/FIJI and saving via BioFormats with the proper image dimensions should do the trick.
  • If the metadata cannot be parsed, you will have to manually enter it.
• It is also recommended to crop your image as much as possible to reduce processing time and memory usage. But really, unless you have massive lightsheet data, it should be pretty fast (seconds to minutes on a typical modern desktop computer).

3D + Timeseries dataset

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/531f76ee-f58e-4058-b5dc-4fdf09af3660

3D (no Timeseries) dataset

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/30d55bfa-bade-4987-88f0-255bb36cb7e8

2D + Timeseries dataset

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d534c6e1-df31-4964-9c12-edff56228be3

Running Nellie's processing pipeline

1. Start Napari (open a Terminal and type napari)

   napari
   

2. Go to Plugins > Nellie (nellie) then to the File select tab.
3. Click Select File of Select Folder to select your image(s).
   • If the metadata boxes do not fill in automatically and turn red, this means Nellie did not detect that metadata portion from your image, and you must manually enter it or reformat your image and try again.
     • The metadata slot will appear green if it is in the correct format.
   • *Note, if you are batch processing, the metadata must be the same for all images if any of them are in an incorrect format (this will be fixed eventually). If they are different, but all pass validation, then it will process fine.
   • You can preview your image via the Open preview button once the metadata is filled in to ensure it looks correct.
   • From this tab, you can also choose what time points and channel you want to analyze, if your file contains more than one slice in those dimensions.
4. Click the Process tab.
5. You can run the full pipeline with Run Nellie, or run individual steps below.
   • Steps can only be run once its previous step has been run.
   • Likewise, visualizations in the Visualization tab can only be opened once its respective step has been run.
6. All intermediate files and output csvs will be saved to [image_directory]/nellie_output/, which can be accessed via the Open output directory button.
   • A separate .csv is created for each level of the organellar hierarchy.
7. Once features have been exported, Nellie will automatically detect this, and allow analysis via the Analyze tab.
   • Analysis at this point is optional, but can be helpful for visualizing, and selectively exporting data.

Using Nellie's visualization plugin

1. Follow the previous processing steps, you only need to do this once per file as long as you don't move or delete the files.
2. Open the Visualization tab
3. Select a visualization from the list.
   1. Raw: Visualize the raw data for the processed channel.
   2. Preprocessed: Visualize the contrast-enhanced data.
   3. Segmentation: Visualize the organelle and branch instance segmentation masks.
   4. Mocap Markers: Visualize the mocap markers used for waypoints.
   5. Reassigned Labels: Visualize the organelle and branch instance segmentation masks where voxels are reassigned based on the first timepoint.
4. To visualize tracks, open and select one of the segmentation layers.
5. To visualize all tracks of all organelles/branches, click the Visualize all frame labels' tracks button.
6. To visualize all tracks of a specific organelle/branch:
   1. Click on the layer, and use the eyedropper tool at the top to select an organelle/branch to track.
   2. Click the Visualize selected label's tracks.

Using Nellie's analysis plugin

1. Follow the previous processing steps, you only need to do this once per file as long as you don't move or delete the files.
2. Open the Analyze tab, select the hierarchy level you want to visualize from the dropdown.
3. Select the level-specific feature you want to visualize from the new dropdown.
4. A histogram of all the data will be displayed.
   • This histogram can be directly exported via the Save graph button. A .png will be saved to [image_directory]/nellie_output/graphs/ with the current datetime.
   • The values of the histogram can be exported via the Export graph data button. A .csv will be saved to [image_directory]/nellie_output/graphs/ with the current datetime.
   • The histogram's x-axis can be viewed in log10 scale via the Log scale checkbox.
   • By default, the histogram shows lines at the mean +/- 1 standard deviation. This can instead be switched to median and quartiles via the Median view checkbox.
5. Press the Overlay mask button to colormap the organelle mask based on your selected feature.
   • Once overlaid, toggle the Timepoint data checkbox to allow you to select a specific timepoint to visualize via the slider.

Other features

• Nellie's plugin offers an Easy screenshot feature:
  • Press the button under Easy screenshot or hit Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-E after clicking your image.
  • The .png will be saved to [image_directory]/nellie_output/screenshots/ with the current datetime.

Feedback / Getting Help

A few options are available for providing feedback or getting help with Nellie:

Github Issues | email | X | wherever else you can find me!

To avoid any unnecessary back-and-forth, p