Accurate in vivo quantification of airway mucociliary transport (MCT) in animal models is important for understanding diseases such as cystic fibrosis, as well as for developing therapies. A non-invasive method of measuring MCT behaviour, based on tracking the position of micron sized particles using synchrotron x-ray imaging, has previously been described. In previous studies, the location (and path) of each particle was tracked manually, which is a time consuming and subjective process. Here we describe particle tracking methods that were developed to reduce the need for manual particle tracking. The MCT marker particles were detected in the synchrotron x-ray images using cascade classifiers. The particle trajectories along the airway surface were generated by linking the detected locations between frames using a modified particle linking algorithm. The developed methods were compared with the manual tracking method on simulated x-ray images, as well as on in ...

中文翻译：

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迈向自动体内气管粘膜纤毛转运测量：在同步加速器相衬X射线图像中检测和跟踪粒子运动。

在动物模型中，准确的体内气道粘膜纤毛运输（MCT）定量对于理解疾病（如囊性纤维化）以及开发疗法非常重要。先前已经描述了一种非同步方法，其基于使用同步加速器X射线成像跟踪微米级颗粒的位置来测量MCT行为。在以前的研究中，手动跟踪每个粒子的位置（和路径），这是一个耗时且主观的过程。在这里，我们描述了为减少对手动粒子跟踪的需求而开发的粒子跟踪方法。使用级联分类器在同步加速器X射线图像中检测到MCT标记物颗粒。通过使用改进的粒子链接算法将帧之间的检测位置链接起来，可以生成沿气道表面的粒子轨迹。将开发的方法与手动跟踪方法在模拟X射线图像上以及在内部X射线图像上进行比较。