Department of Computer Science, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA.
Bioengineering Department, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA.
Med Biol Eng Comput. 2018 Dec;56(12):2353-2365. doi: 10.1007/s11517-018-1863-7. Epub 2018 Jul 2.
Zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a powerful animal model used in many areas of genetics and disease research. Despite its advantages for cardiac research, the heartbeat pattern of zebrafish larvae under different stress conditions is not well documented quantitatively. Several effective automated heartbeat detection methods have been developed to reduce the workload for larva heartbeat analysis. However, most require complex experimental setups and necessitate direct observation of the larva heart. In this paper, we propose the Zebrafish Heart Rate Automatic Method (Z-HRAM), which detects and tracks the heartbeats of immobilized, ventrally positioned zebrafish larvae without direct larva heart observation. Z-HRAM tracks localized larva body deformation that is highly correlated with heart movement. Multiresolution dense optical flow-based motion tracking and principal component analysis are used to identify heartbeats. Here, we present results of Z-HRAM on estimating heart rate from video recordings of seizure-induced larvae, which were of low resolution (1024 × 760) and low frame rate (3 to 4 fps). Heartbeats detected from Z-HRAM were shown to correlate reliably with those determined through corresponding electrocardiogram and manual video inspection. We conclude that Z-HRAM is a robust, computationally efficient, and easily applicable tool for studying larva cardiac function in general laboratory conditions. Graphical abstract Flowchart of the automatic zebrafish heartbeat detection.
斑马鱼（Danio rerio）是一种在遗传学和疾病研究的许多领域中广泛应用的强大动物模型。尽管其在心脏研究方面具有优势，但在不同应激条件下斑马鱼幼体的心跳模式尚未得到充分的定量记录。已经开发了几种有效的自动心跳检测方法来减少幼体心跳分析的工作量。然而，大多数方法需要复杂的实验设置，并需要直接观察幼鱼的心脏。在本文中，我们提出了斑马鱼心率自动检测方法（Z-HRAM），该方法可以在不直接观察幼鱼心脏的情况下，检测和跟踪固定、腹位的斑马鱼幼体的心跳。Z-HRAM 跟踪与心脏运动高度相关的局部幼体身体变形。基于多分辨率密集光流的运动跟踪和主成分分析用于识别心跳。在这里，我们展示了 Z-HRAM 用于从癫痫诱导的幼鱼的视频记录中估计心率的结果，这些视频记录的分辨率低（1024×760），帧率低（3 到 4 fps）。从 Z-HRAM 检测到的心跳与通过相应的心电图和手动视频检查确定的心跳可靠相关。我们得出结论，Z-HRAM 是一种强大、计算效率高且易于在一般实验室条件下研究幼鱼心脏功能的工具。
