Automated parasite faecal egg counting using fluorescence labelling, smartphone image capture and computational image analysis
| Autor: | Martin K. Nielsen, David W. Rodgers, Paul Slusarewicz, Christopher Mills, Gabriel J. Popa, K. Martin Chow, Stefanie Pagano, Michael D. Mendenhall |
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| Rok vydání: | 2015 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
Veterinary medicine Medical diagnostic 030231 tropical medicine Chitin Laboratory microscope Biology 03 medical and health sciences Feces 0302 clinical medicine Dogs Labelling medicine Image Processing Computer-Assisted Parasite hosting Animals Anthelmintic Horses Ascaridida Parasite Egg Count Fluorescent Dyes Strongyloidea Sheep Goats Parasite Control 030108 mycology & parasitology Image capture Infectious Diseases Coccidian parasites Immunology Cats Parasitology Cattle Smartphone Filtration medicine.drug |
| Zdroj: | International journal for parasitology. 46(8) |
| ISSN: | 1879-0135 |
| Popis: | Intestinal parasites are a concern in veterinary medicine worldwide and for human health in the developing world. Infections are identified by microscopic visualisation of parasite eggs in faeces, which is time-consuming, requires technical expertise and is impractical for use on-site. For these reasons, recommendations for parasite surveillance are not widely adopted and parasite control is based on administration of rote prophylactic treatments with anthelmintic drugs. This approach is known to promote anthelmintic resistance, so there is a pronounced need for a convenient egg counting assay to promote good clinical practice. Using a fluorescent chitin-binding protein, we show that this structural carbohydrate is present and accessible in shells of ova of strongyle, ascarid, trichurid and coccidian parasites. Furthermore, we show that a cellular smartphone can be used as an inexpensive device to image fluorescent eggs and, by harnessing the computational power of the phone, to perform image analysis to count the eggs. Strongyle egg counts generated by the smartphone system had a significant linear correlation with manual McMaster counts (R(2)=0.98), but with a significantly lower coefficient of variation (P=0.0177). Furthermore, the system was capable of differentiating equine strongyle and ascarid eggs similar to the McMaster method, but with significantly lower coefficients of variation (P |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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