Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Beijing Key Laboratory of Diagnostic and Traceability Technologies for Food Poisoning, Beijing, China.
School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, Shandong, China.
Technol Health Care. 2024;32(S1):145-154. doi: 10.3233/THC-248013.
Caenorhabditis elegans is a widely used model animal. Chemotaxis assay is one of the experiments that study the effects of different chemicals on nematodes. It is mainly used to study the effects of different chemicals on the perception behavior of nematodes. By conducting this experiment, not only can the neurotoxicity of chemicals be reflected, but also the impact of chemicals on physiological functions regulated by the nervous system, such as nematode feeding behavior and basic motor ability.
The experiment of detecting the response of nematode to chemicals is also a common method of chemical toxicity testing based on nematode models. In the analysis of worm tendency behavior, manual operations are generally used. Manually processing a large number of worms under a microscope is very time-consuming and labor-intensive. The current quantitative methods for nematode chemotaxis experiments are not only time-consuming and labor-intensive, but also biased in experimental results due to differences in judgment standards among experimenters. The automatic and efficient quantification method for nematode chemotaxis experiments is a very important technical difficulty in the field of nematode experiments.
Here, we have designed an automatic quantification method for nematode chemotaxis experiments by incorporating image acquisition and processing techniques into the nematode experiment.
The experimental results show that the Pearson correlation coefficient between manual and automatic counting results is 0.978.
This proves the effectiveness of our method. Applying the automatic measurement method to replace manual counting by the experimenter can improve work efficiency, and reduce errors in human counting operations.
秀丽隐杆线虫是一种广泛使用的模式动物。趋化性测定是研究不同化学物质对线虫影响的实验之一。它主要用于研究不同化学物质对线虫感知行为的影响。通过进行该实验，不仅可以反映化学物质的神经毒性，还可以反映化学物质对神经系统调节的生理功能的影响，如线虫的摄食行为和基本运动能力。
检测线虫对化学物质的反应的实验也是基于线虫模型的化学毒性测试的常用方法。在分析线虫趋势行为时，通常采用手动操作。在显微镜下手动处理大量线虫非常耗时且费力。目前线虫趋化性实验的定量方法不仅耗时耗力，而且由于实验者判断标准的差异，实验结果存在偏差。线虫趋化性实验的自动、高效定量方法是线虫实验领域的一个非常重要的技术难点。
在这里，我们将图像采集和处理技术融入线虫实验中，设计了一种线虫趋化性实验的自动定量方法。
手动和自动计数结果之间的皮尔逊相关系数为 0.978。
这证明了我们方法的有效性。应用自动测量方法代替实验者手动计数可以提高工作效率，并减少人工计数操作中的误差。
