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 gait—FOG—symptoms 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 Parkinson’s disease”

In this paper we investigated the use of smartphone sensors and Artificial Intelligence techniques for the automatic quantification 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 Artificial 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 classification error was less than 0.5 scale point in about 80% cases.Conclusions:Weproposedanobjectiveandreliabletoolfor theautomaticquantificationoftheMDS-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