HeartCV

HeartCV automates measurement of heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) in transparent organisms by combining automated heart localization and signal-analysis algorithms for comparative and developmental physiology.

Key Features:

• Implementation: Provided as a Python package for computational analysis of cardiac signals.
• Automated localization: Uses advanced algorithms to localize the heart within mobile individuals, supporting analysis of transparent organisms and early developmental stages of aquatic animals.
• Transferability across species: Functions across diverse species and varying heart morphologies and life-history stages to support comparative studies.
• Validation and versatility: Validated by comparison with manual measurements across multiple species and experimental conditions and applicable to different dataset types including longitudinal studies.
• Robustness to imaging variability: Addresses limitations of traditional imaging methods by accommodating variability across experimental setups.

Scientific Applications:

• Whole-organismal physiology: Quantifies cardiac function to study physiological responses at the organismal level.
• Developmental biology: Enables HR and HRV measurement in transparent and aquatic model organisms during early developmental stages.
• Comparative physiology: Supports cross-species comparisons of heart rate and variability across differing morphologies.
• High-throughput and longitudinal studies: Facilitates large-scale and time-series analyses of HR and HRV across experimental conditions.

Methodology:

Integrates automated localization techniques with algorithms that extract heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV), and validation is performed by comparison with manual measurements across species and experimental conditions.