A New Directionality Tool Reveals Muscle Microtubule Pattern Alterations

Thursday, November 07, 2013 — Poster Session II
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.	FAES Academic Center (Upper-Level Terrace)	NIAMS	BIOENG-22

Author

E Ralston

Abstract

Cytoskeletal components have distinct patterns, whose modifications may indicate pathological changes. However, the changes may be difficult to assess visually. For example, recent data show that microtubules play a role in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy pathology. The microtubules of the mdx mouse are perturbed. A quantitation tool is needed to analyze the microtubule patterns in muscle fibers. The most commonly used tool up to date is based on the Tamura method, a approach mainly detecting on local image features while neglecting the global features. We find that this method is not well suited to the structure of microtubules. We have therefore developed a new directionality detection method utilizing texture features. The software generates a graphic by calculating the texture correlation for each orientation. Both local and global features contribute to the final results. A directionality score is also calculated based on the peak sharpness in the plot. This new tool was used to compare microtubules in the fast and slow-twitched muscle fibers of wild-type and mdx. The directionality scores revealed differences among these mouse lines which could not be appreciated visually and the new tool is also able to detect microtubule distribution alterations at different ages.