Is there a way in Matlab to measure curvy surfaces?

I am working with a cell and need to measure a lot of frames of a video. I was thinking to find the Centroid of the cell and from there having tangent lines drawn in 1 degree intervals all around the cell and measuring the difference it is away from the centroid. Is there any way to do this or a better way? I have attached a picture of the cell in one of the frames. I maybe thought converting the picture to binary would help but I am not sure how to use it if it is in binary. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.