Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is an ideal model organism for studying neuronal functions at the system level. This article develops a customized system for whole-body motor neuron calcium imaging of freely moving C. elegans without the coverslip pressed. Firstly, we proposed a fast centerline localization algorithm that could deal with most topology-variant cases costing only 6 ms for one frame, not only benefits for real-time localization but also for post-analysis. Secondly, we implemented a full-time two-axis synchronized motion strategy by adaptively adjusting the motion parameters of two motors in every short-term motion step (~50 ms). Following the above motion tracking configuration, the tracking performance of our system has been demonstrated to completely support the high spatiotemporal resolution calcium imaging on whole-body motor neurons of wild-type (N2) worms as well as two mutants (unc-2, unc-9), even the instantaneous speed of worm moving without coverslip pressed was extremely up to 400 μm/s.

中文翻译：

---

自由移动的秀丽隐杆线虫的快速全身运动神经元钙成像，无需按压盖玻片

秀丽隐杆线虫( C. elegans ) 是在系统水平研究神经元功能的理想模式生物。本文为自由移动的秀丽隐杆线虫的全身运动神经元钙成像开发了一个定制系统没有压盖玻片。首先，我们提出了一种快速的中心线定位算法，可以处理大多数拓扑变异的情况，一帧仅需 6 ms，不仅有利于实时定位，而且有利于后期分析。其次，我们通过在每个短期运动步骤（~50 ms）中自适应调整两个电机的运动参数来实现全时两轴同步运动策略。根据上述运动跟踪配置，我们系统的跟踪性能已被证明完全支持对野生型 (N2) 蠕虫以及两个突变体 ( unc-2 , unc ) 全身运动神经元的高时空分辨率钙成像-9)，即使在没有压盖玻片的情况下蜗杆移动的瞬时速度也高达 400 μm/s。