A new method to characterize function of theDrosophilaheart by means of optical flow

Abstract

The minuteness of poses a challenge to quantify performance of its tubular heart and computer-aided analysis of its beating heart has evolved as a resilient compromise between instrumental costs and data robustness. Here, we introduce an optical flow algorithm (OFA) that continuously registers coherent movement within videos of the beating heart and uses this information to subscribe the time course of observation with characteristic phases of cardiac contraction or relaxation. We report that the OFA combines high discriminatory power with robustness to characterize the performance of the tubular heart using indicators from human cardiology. We provide proof of this concept using the test bed of established cardiac conditions that include the effects of ageing, knockdown of the slow repolarizing potassium channel subunit KCNQ and ras-mediated hypertrophy of the heart tube. Together, this establishes the analysis of coherent movement as a suitable indicator of qualitative changes of the heart's beating characteristics, which improves the usefulness of as a model of cardiac diseases.

A Drosophila heart optical coherence microscopy dataset for automatic video segmentation

“… 21 and upgraded by Monck et al . 24 to retrieve the fly heart coherent movement. This method has low implementation cost and can well characterize heart beating, but did not achieve full automaticity and the animals were not intact.…”

Drug screening in Drosophila; why, when, and when not?

“…Further, in examples cited here, toxicity in Drosophila was assessed in terms of organism survival. But technologies exist to monitor toxicity at the organ level such as cardiac function (e.g., Monck et al, ), neurological function such as learning and memory (e.g., Pitman et al, ) and locomotor function as in climbing assays (e.g., Willenbrink et al, ). There is potential to exploit these assays that are relatively low in expense compared to similar assays in rodent models.…”