6 research outputs found
A method for astral microtubule tracking in fluorescence images of cells doped with taxol and nocodazole
In this paper we describe an algorithm that performs
automatic detection and tracking of astral microtubules in fluorescence
confocal images. This sub-population of microtubules only exists during
and immediately before mitosis and aids in the spindle orientation by
connecting it to the cell cortex. Anomalies in their dynamic behaviour
play a causal role in many diseases, such as development disorders and
cancer.
The main novelty of the proposed algorithm lies in the fact it provides a
fully automated estimation of parameters related to microtubule dynamic
instability (growth velocity, track length and track lifetime), and helps in
understanding the effects of intermediate drug concentrations. Its performance
has been objectively assessed using publicly available synthetic
data and largely employed metrics. Moreover, we present experiments
addressing cell cultures doped with different concentrations of taxol
and nocodazole. Such drugs are known to suppress the microtubule
dynamic instability, but their effects at intermediate concentrations are
not completely assessed. The algorithm been compared with other stateof-
the-art approaches, tested on consistent real datasets. The results are
encouraging in terms of performance, robustness and simplicity of use,
and the algorithm is now routinely employed in our Department of
Molecular Biotechnology
Home monitoring of motor fluctuations in Parkinson's disease patients
In Parkinson's disease, motor fluctuations (worsening of tremor, bradykinesia, freezing of gait, postural instability) affect up to 70% of patients within 9 years of \textsc {l}-dopa therapy. Nevertheless, the assessment of motor fluctuations is difficult in a medical office, and is commonly based on poorly reliable self-reports. Hence, the use of wearable sensors is desirable. In this preliminary trial, we have investigated bradykinesia and freezing of gaitāFOGāsymptoms by means of inertial measurement units. To this purpose, we have employed a single smartphone on the patient's waist for FOG experiment (38 patients), and on patient thigh for LA (93 subjects). Given the sound performance achieved in this trial (AUC = 0.97 for FOG and AUC = 0.92 for LA), motor fluctuations may be estimated in domestic environments. To this end, we plan to perform measures and data processing on SensorTile, a tiny IoT module including several sensors, a microcontroller, a BlueTooth low-energy interface and microSD card, implementing an electronic diary of motor fluctuations, posture and dyskinesia during activity of daily living
Smartphone-based estimation of item 3.8 of the MDS-UPDRS-III for assessing leg agility in people with Parkinsonās diseaseā
In this paper we investigated the use of smartphone sensors and Artiļ¬cial Intelligence techniques for the automatic quantiļ¬cation of the MDS-UPDRS-Part III Leg Agility (LA) task, representative of lower limb bradykinesia. Methods: We collected inertial data from 93 PD subjects. Four expert neurologists provided clinical evaluations. We employed a novel Artiļ¬cial Neural Network approach in order to get a continuous output, going beyond the MDS-UPDRS score discretization. Results: We found a Pearson correlation of 0.92 between algorithm output and average clinical score, compared to an inter-rater agreement index of 0.88. Furthermore, the classiļ¬cation error was less than 0.5 scale point in about 80% cases.Conclusions:Weproposedanobjectiveandreliabletoolfor theautomaticquantiļ¬cationoftheMDS-UPDRSLegAgilitytask. In perspective, this tool is part of a larger monitoring program to be carried out during activities of daily living, and managed by the patients themselves
Smartphone-based estimation of item 3.8 of the MDS-UPDRS-III for assessing leg agility in people with Parkinson's disease
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DETECTION AND TRACKING OF ASTRAL MICROTUBULES IN FLUORESCENCE MICROSCOPY IMAGES
In this paper we explore detection and tracking of astral microtubules,
a sub-population of microtubules which only exists during
and immediately before mitosis and aids in the spindle orientation
by connecting it to the cell cortex. Its analysis can be useful to determine
the presence of certain diseases, such as brain pathologies and
cancer. The proposed algorithm focuses on overcoming the problems
regarding fluorescence microscopy images and microtubule
behaviour by using various image processing techniques and is then
compared with three existing algorithms, tested on consistent sets of
images