Cilialyzer

Cilialyzer analyzes high-speed video microscopy (HSVM) recordings to quantify mucociliary activity and assess ciliary function for studies and diagnosis of Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD).

Key Features:

• HSVM compatibility: Supports analysis of high-speed video microscopy recordings of respiratory epithelial cilia.
• Image sequence handling: Loading, preprocessing, and replay of recorded image sequences and videos for visual assessment.
• Ciliary beat pattern analysis: Examination and characterization of ciliary beat patterns to evaluate ciliary function.
• Quantitative metrics computation: Computation of ciliary beating frequency (CBF), activity maps, and the metric "frequency correlation length."
• Particle tracking: Particle tracking-based determination of mucociliary transport speed.
• Validation on samples: Computational methods validated using simulated data and representative clinical samples including healthy controls and genetically confirmed PCD cases with DNAI1 and DNAH11 mutations.

Scientific Applications:

• PCD assessment: Functional assessment of ciliary activity to support diagnosis and characterization of Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD).
• Mucociliary transport quantification: Measurement of mucociliary transport speed using particle tracking to evaluate airway clearance.
• Ciliary function research: Quantitative analysis of ciliary beat frequency and patterns for comparative studies across patient cohorts and conditions.
• Method benchmarking: Use of simulated and clinical HSVM data to test and benchmark computational approaches for ciliary analysis.

Methodology:

Implemented in Python; performs loading/preprocessing of HSVM image sequences, computes ciliary beating frequency (CBF), activity maps and frequency correlation length, and applies particle tracking for transport speed, with methods tested on simulated and clinical HSVM samples.