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Automated software for analysis of ciliary beat frequency and metachronal wave orientation in primary ciliary dyskinesia

  • Rhinology
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Abstract

Patients with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) have structural and/or functional alterations of cilia that imply deficits in mucociliary clearance and different respiratory pathologies. A useful indicator for the difficult diagnosis is the ciliary beat frequency (CBF) that is significantly lower in pathological cases than in physiological ones. The CBF computation is not rapid, therefore, the aim of this study is to propose an automated method to evaluate it directly from videos of ciliated cells. The cells are taken from inferior nasal turbinates and videos of ciliary movements are registered and eventually processed by the developed software. The software consists in the extraction of features from videos (written with C++ language) and the computation of the frequency (written with Matlab language). This system was tested both on the samples of nasal cavity and software models, and the results were really promising because in a few seconds, it can compute a reliable frequency if compared with that measured with visual methods. It is to be noticed that the reliability of the computation increases with the quality of acquisition system and especially with the sampling frequency. It is concluded that the developed software could be a useful mean for PCD diagnosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no financial relationship with the organization that sponsored the research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interdepartmental Research Center “E. Piaggio”, Faculty of Engineering, University of Pisa, via Diotisalvi, 2, 56126, Pisa, Italy

    Giulia Mantovani & Giovanni Vozzi

  2. Pulmonology and Allergology Section, Department of Pediatrics, University of Pisa, Via Roma, 67, 56126, Pisa, Italy

    Massimo Pifferi

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Pisa, via Diotisalvi, 2, 56126, Pisa, Italy

    Giovanni Vozzi

Authors
  1. Giulia Mantovani
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  2. Massimo Pifferi
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  3. Giovanni Vozzi
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Correspondence to Giulia Mantovani or Giovanni Vozzi.

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Mantovani, G., Pifferi, M. & Vozzi, G. Automated software for analysis of ciliary beat frequency and metachronal wave orientation in primary ciliary dyskinesia. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol 267, 897–902 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-009-1161-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-009-1161-y

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