Wülfers E M, Torres N S, Lenis G, Li H, Seemann G, Dössel O, Bridge J H B, Sachse F B
Biomed Tech (Berl). 2012 Aug 24;57(SI-1 Track-B):46-49. doi: 10.1515/bmt-2012-4438.
Various types of heart disease are associated with structural remodeling of cardiac cells. In this work, we present a software framework for automated analyses of structures and protein distributions involved in excitation-contraction coupling in cardiac muscle cells (myocytes). The software framework was designed for processing sets of three-dimensional image stacks, which were created by fluorescent labeling and scanning confocal microscopy of ventricular myocytes from a rabbit infarction model. Design of the software framework reflected the large data volume of image stacks and their large number by selection of efficient and automated methods of digital image processing. Specifically, we selected methods with small user interaction and automated parameter identification by analysis of image stacks. We applied the software framework to exemplary data yielding quantitative information on the arrangement of cell membrane (sarcolemma), the density of ryanodine receptor clusters and their distance to the sarcolemma. We suggest that the presented software framework can be used to automatically quantify various aspects of cellular remodeling, which will provide insights in basic mechanisms of heart diseases and their modeling using computational approaches. Further applications of the developed approaches include clinical cardiological diagnosis and therapy planning.
多种类型的心脏病与心肌细胞的结构重塑有关。在这项工作中，我们提出了一个软件框架，用于自动分析心肌细胞（肌细胞）中兴奋-收缩偶联所涉及的结构和蛋白质分布。该软件框架旨在处理通过对来自兔梗死模型的心室肌细胞进行荧光标记和扫描共聚焦显微镜成像而创建的三维图像堆栈集。软件框架的设计通过选择高效且自动化的数字图像处理方法，反映了图像堆栈的大数据量及其数量之多。具体而言，我们选择了用户交互少且通过分析图像堆栈自动识别参数的方法。我们将该软件框架应用于示例数据，得出了关于细胞膜（肌膜）排列、兰尼碱受体簇密度及其与肌膜距离的定量信息。我们认为，所提出的软件框架可用于自动量化细胞重塑的各个方面，这将为心脏病的基本机制及其使用计算方法进行建模提供见解。所开发方法的进一步应用包括临床心脏病诊断和治疗规划。
