Wilke Skadi, Groenveld Dennis, Grittner Ulrike, List Jonathan, Flöel Agnes
Department of Neurology, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2016 Jun 1;11(6):e0156066. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0156066. eCollection 2016.
The corticomotor silent period (CSP), as assessed noninvasively by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in the primary motor cortex, has been found to reflect intracortical inhibitory mechanisms. Analysis of CSP is mostly conducted manually. However, this approach is time-consuming, and comparison of results from different laboratories may be compromised by inter-rater variability in analysis. No open source program for automated analysis is currently available.
METHODS/RESULTS: Here, we describe cross-validation with the manual analysis of an in-house written automated tool to assess CSP (cSPider). Results from automated routine were compared with results of the manual evaluation. We found high inter-method reliability between automated and manual analysis (p<0.001), and significantly reduced time for CSP analysis (median = 10.3 sec for automated analysis of 10 CSPs vs. median = 270 sec for manual analysis of 10 CSPs). cSPider can be downloaded free of charge.
cSPider allows automated analysis of CSP in a reliable and time-efficient manner. Use of this open-source tool may help to improve comparison of data from different laboratories.
经颅磁刺激（TMS）在初级运动皮层进行非侵入性评估时，皮质运动静息期（CSP）已被发现可反映皮质内抑制机制。CSP分析大多是手动进行的。然而，这种方法耗时，且不同实验室结果的比较可能会因分析过程中评分者间的差异而受到影响。目前尚无用于自动分析的开源程序。
方法/结果：在此，我们描述了使用一个内部编写的自动评估CSP的工具（cSPider）与手动分析进行交叉验证。将自动程序的结果与手动评估的结果进行比较。我们发现自动分析与手动分析之间具有较高的方法间可靠性（p<0.001），并且CSP分析时间显著缩短（自动分析10个CSP的中位数为10.3秒，而手动分析10个CSP的中位数为270秒）。cSPider可免费下载。
cSPider能够以可靠且高效的方式对CSP进行自动分析。使用这个开源工具可能有助于改善不同实验室数据的比较。
