A team of researchers from Ben Gurion University and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have developed a method to determine which tumor cells are most likely to metastasize efficiently to distant sites in the body. An interdisciplinary research team headed by one of BGU's newest faculty members, Dr. Assaf Zaritsky of the Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering, and Gaudenz Danuser of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW) at Dallas, has developed a groundbreaking method based on artificial intelligence to identify melanoma cells that are likely to metastasize to other parts of the body. The method, called "quantitative live cell histology", was presented at the American Society for Cell Biology / EMBO conference in San Diego last December. It was developed during Dr. Zaritsky's postdoctoral studies at UTSW. The approach calls for filming live cancer cells with microscopic cameras and using artificial intelligence to analyze the video sequence and identify cells' appearance and behavioral patterns that associate with metastatic potential.