Gabriel Leandro, Almeida Helena, Avelar Marta, Sarmento Bruno, das Neves José
i3S-Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Universidade do Porto, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal.
INEB-Instituto de Engenharia Biomédica, Universidade do Porto, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal.
Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Jun 1;12(11):1899. doi: 10.3390/nano12111899.
The study of particle transport in different environments plays an essential role in understanding interactions with humans and other living organisms. Importantly, obtained data can be directly used for multiple applications in fields such as fundamental biology, toxicology, or medicine. Particle movement in biorelevant media can be readily monitored using microscopy and converted into time-resolved trajectories using freely available tracking software. However, translation into tangible and meaningful parameters is time consuming and not always intuitive. We developed new software-MPTHub-as an open-access, standalone, user-friendly tool for the rapid and reliable analysis of particle trajectories extracted from video microscopy. The software was programmed using Python and allowed to import and analyze trajectory data, as well as to export relevant data such as individual and ensemble time-averaged mean square displacements and effective diffusivity, and anomalous transport exponent. Data processing was reliable, fast (total processing time of less than 10 s), and required minimal memory resources (up to a maximum of around 150 MB in random access memory). Demonstration of software applicability was conducted by studying the transport of different polystyrene nanoparticles (100-200 nm) in mucus surrogates. Overall, MPTHub represents a freely available software tool that can be used even by inexperienced users for studying the transport of particles in biorelevant media.
研究不同环境中的粒子传输对于理解与人类和其他生物的相互作用起着至关重要的作用。重要的是，所获得的数据可直接用于基础生物学、毒理学或医学等领域的多种应用。生物相关介质中的粒子运动可以很容易地通过显微镜进行监测，并使用免费的跟踪软件转换为时间分辨轨迹。然而，将其转化为切实可行且有意义的参数既耗时又不总是直观的。我们开发了新软件MPTHub，作为一个开放获取、独立、用户友好的工具，用于快速可靠地分析从视频显微镜中提取的粒子轨迹。该软件使用Python编程，允许导入和分析轨迹数据，以及导出相关数据，如个体和总体时间平均均方位移、有效扩散率和反常传输指数。数据处理可靠、快速（总处理时间少于10秒），并且所需内存资源最少（随机存取存储器中最多约150 MB）。通过研究不同聚苯乙烯纳米颗粒（100 - 200 nm）在黏液替代物中的传输来证明软件的适用性。总体而言，MPTHub是一个免费的软件工具，即使是没有经验的用户也可以使用它来研究生物相关介质中粒子的传输。
