scholarly journals A machine vision based frailty index for mice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leinani E. Hession ◽  
Gautam S. Sabnis ◽  
Gary A. Churchill ◽  
Vivek Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Health Status ◽  
Open Field ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Frailty Index ◽  
Absolute Error ◽  
Video Data ◽  
Biological Aging ◽  
Chronological Aging ◽  
Field Assay ◽  
Median Absolute Error

1AbstractChronological aging is uniform, but biological aging is heterogeneous. Clinically, this heterogeneity manifests itself in health status and mortality, and it distinguishes healthy from unhealthy aging. Clinical frailty indexes (FIs) serve as an important tool in gerontology to capture health status. FIs have been adapted for use in mice and are an effective predictor of mortality risk. To accelerate our understanding of biological aging, high-throughput approaches to pre-clinical studies are necessary. Currently, however, mouse frailty indexing is manual and relies on trained scorers, which imposes limits on scalability and reliability. Here, we introduce a machine learning based visual frailty index (vFI) for mice that operates on video data from an open field assay. We generate a large mouse FI datasets comprising 256 males and 195 females. From video data on these same mice, we use neural networks to extract morphometric, gait, and other behavioral features that correlate with manual FI score and age. We use these features to train a regression model that accurately predicts frailty within 1.03 ± 0.08 (3.9% ± 0.3%) of the pre-normalized FI score in terms of median absolute error. We show that features of biological aging are encoded in open-field video data and can be used to construct a vFI that can complement or replace current manual FI methods. We use the vFI data to examine sex-specific aspects of aging in mice. This vFI provides increased accuracy, reproducibility, and scalability, that will enable large scale mechanistic and interventional studies of aging in mice.

scholarly journals Accurate Epigenetic Aging in Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), an Essential Step in the Conservation of at-Risk Dolphins.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Barratclough ◽  
Cynthia R. Smith ◽  
Forrest M. Gomez ◽  
Theoni Photopoulou ◽  
Ryan Takeshita ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tursiops Truncatus ◽  
Cross Validation ◽  
Bottlenose Dolphins ◽  
Absolute Error ◽  
Population Demographics ◽  
Chronological Aging ◽  
Essential Step ◽  
Epigenetic Aging ◽  
Estimation Capacity ◽  
Median Absolute Error

Epigenetics, specifically DNA methylation, allows for estimation of animal age from blood or remotely sampled skin. This multi tissue epigenetic aging clock uses 110 longitudinal samples from 34 Navy bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), identifying 195 cytosine-phosphate-guanine sites associated with chronological aging via leave-one-individual-out-cross-validation (R2=0.95). With a median absolute error of 2.5 years this clock improves age estimation capacity in wild dolphins, expanding conservation efforts, enabling better understanding of population demographics.

scholarly journals Towards a large-scale assessment of the relationship between biological and chronological aging: The INSPIRE Mouse Cohort

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Y. Santin ◽  
S. Lopez ◽  
I. Ader ◽  
S. Andrieu ◽  
N. Blanchard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Biological Fluids ◽  
Clinical Signs ◽  
Accelerated Aging ◽  
Chronological Age ◽  
Biological Aging ◽  
Chronological Aging ◽  
Exercise Interventions ◽  
Early Signs

Aging is the major risk factor for the development of chronic diseases. After decades of research focused on extending lifespan, current efforts seek primarily to promote healthy aging. Recent advances suggest that biological processes linked to aging are more reliable than chronological age to account for an individual’s functional status, i.e. frail or robust. It is becoming increasingly apparent that biological aging may be detectable as a progressive loss of resilience much earlier than the appearance of clinical signs of frailty. In this context, the INSPIRE program was built to identify the mechanisms of accelerated aging and the early biological signs predicting frailty and pathological aging. To address this issue, we designed a cohort of outbred Swiss mice (1576 male and female mice) in which we will continuously monitor spontaneous and voluntary physical activity from 6 to 24 months of age under either normal or high fat/high sucrose diet. At different age points (6, 12, 18, 24 months), multiorgan functional phenotyping will be carried out to identify early signs of organ dysfunction and generate a large biological fluids/feces/organs biobank (100,000 samples). A comprehensive correlation between functional and biological phenotypes will be assessed to determine: 1) the early signs of biological aging and their relationship with chronological age; 2) the role of dietary and exercise interventions on accelerating or decelerating the rate of biological aging; and 3) novel targets for the promotion of healthy aging. All the functional and omics data, as well as the biobank generated in the framework of the INSPIRE cohort will be available to the aging scientific community. The present article describes the scientific background and the strategies employed for the design of the INSPIRE Mouse cohort.

Benchmark of Simplified Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory for UV-Vis Spectral Properties of Porphyrinoids

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamal Batra ◽  
Stefan Zahn ◽  
Thomas Heine
Keyword(s):  
Density Functional Theory ◽  
Density Functional ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Absolute Error ◽  
Time Dependent ◽  
Basis Set ◽  
Basis Sets ◽  
Functional Theory ◽  
Framework Materials ◽  
Dependent Density

<p>We thoroughly benchmark time-dependent density- functional theory for the predictive calculation of UV/Vis spectra of porphyrin derivatives. With the aim to provide an approach that is computationally feasible for large-scale applications such as biological systems or molecular framework materials, albeit performing with high accuracy for the Q-bands, we compare the results given by various computational protocols, including basis sets, density-functionals (including gradient corrected local functionals, hybrids, double hybrids and range-separated functionals), and various variants of time-dependent density-functional theory, including the simplified Tamm-Dancoff approximation. An excellent choice for these calculations is the range-separated functional CAM-B3LYP in combination with the simplified Tamm-Dancoff approximation and a basis set of double-ζ quality def2-SVP (mean absolute error [MAE] of ~0.05 eV). This is not surpassed by more expensive approaches, not even by double hybrid functionals, and solely systematic excitation energy scaling slightly improves the results (MAE ~0.04 eV). </p>

scholarly journals Contactless Video-Based Heart Rate Monitoring of a Resting and an Anesthetized Pig

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 442
Author(s):  
Meiqing Wang ◽  
Ali Youssef ◽  
Mona Larsen ◽  
Jean-Loup Rault ◽  
Daniel Berckmans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Estimation Error ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Absolute Error ◽  
Mean Value ◽  
Video Data ◽  
Window Functions ◽  
The Face ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Better Than

Heart rate (HR) is a vital bio-signal that is relatively easy to monitor with contact sensors and is related to a living organism’s state of health, stress and well-being. The objective of this study was to develop an algorithm to extract HR (in beats per minute) of an anesthetized and a resting pig from raw video data as a first step towards continuous monitoring of health and welfare of pigs. Data were obtained from two experiments, wherein the pigs were video recorded whilst wearing an electrocardiography (ECG) monitoring system as gold standard (GS). In order to develop the algorithm, this study used a bandpass filter to remove noise. Then, a short-time Fourier transform (STFT) method was tested by evaluating different window sizes and window functions to accurately identify the HR. The resulting algorithm was first tested on videos of an anesthetized pig that maintained a relatively constant HR. The GS HR measurements for the anesthetized pig had a mean value of 71.76 bpm and standard deviation (SD) of 3.57 bpm. The developed algorithm had 2.33 bpm in mean absolute error (MAE), 3.09 bpm in root mean square error (RMSE) and 67% in HR estimation error below 3.5 bpm (PE3.5). The sensitivity of the algorithm was then tested on the video of a non-anaesthetized resting pig, as an animal in this state has more fluctuations in HR than an anaesthetized pig, while motion artefacts are still minimized due to resting. The GS HR measurements for the resting pig had a mean value of 161.43 bpm and SD of 10.11 bpm. The video-extracted HR showed a performance of 4.69 bpm in MAE, 6.43 bpm in RMSE and 57% in PE3.5. The results showed that HR monitoring using only the green channel of the video signal was better than using three color channels, which reduces computing complexity. By comparing different regions of interest (ROI), the region around the abdomen was found physiologically better than the face and front leg parts. In summary, the developed algorithm based on video data has potential to be used for contactless HR measurement and may be applied on resting pigs for real-time monitoring of their health and welfare status, which is of significant interest for veterinarians and farmers.

scholarly journals Large-Scale Video Retrieval via Deep Local Convolutional Features

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Chen Zhang ◽  
Bin Hu ◽  
Yucong Suo ◽  
Zhiqiang Zou ◽  
Yimu Ji
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Video Retrieval ◽  
Video Data ◽  
Query Image ◽  
Key Frame Extraction ◽  
Key Frame ◽  
Storage Cost ◽  
Extraction Algorithm ◽  
Feature Aggregation ◽  
And Storage

In this paper, we study the challenge of image-to-video retrieval, which uses the query image to search relevant frames from a large collection of videos. A novel framework based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) is proposed to perform large-scale video retrieval with low storage cost and high search efficiency. Our framework consists of the key-frame extraction algorithm and the feature aggregation strategy. Specifically, the key-frame extraction algorithm takes advantage of the clustering idea so that redundant information is removed in video data and storage cost is greatly reduced. The feature aggregation strategy adopts average pooling to encode deep local convolutional features followed by coarse-to-fine retrieval, which allows rapid retrieval in the large-scale video database. The results from extensive experiments on two publicly available datasets demonstrate that the proposed method achieves superior efficiency as well as accuracy over other state-of-the-art visual search methods.

scholarly journals Order Reduction based on Coulomb’s and Franklin’s laws Algorithm

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ram Kumar ◽  
Afzal Sikander
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Linear Time ◽  
Order Reduction ◽  
Absolute Error ◽  
Search Space ◽  
Engineering Problem ◽  
Reduced Order Model ◽  
Order Model ◽  
Reduced Order ◽  
Linear Time Invariant

Abstract The Coulomb and Franklin laws (CFL) algorithm is used to construct a lower order model of higher-order continuous time linear time-invariant (LTI) systems in this study. CFL is quite easy to implement in obtaining reduced order model of large scale system in control engineering problem as it employs the combined effect of Coulomb’s and Franklin’s laws to find the best values in search space. The unknown coefficients are obtained using the CFLA methodology, which minimises the integral square error (ISE) between the original and proposed ROMs. To achieve the reduced order model, five practical systems of different orders are considered. Finally, multiple performance indicators such as the ISE, integral of absolute error (IAE), and integral of time multiplied by absolute error were calculated to determine the efficacy of the proposed methodology. The simulation results were compared to previously published well-known research.

scholarly journals Uncoupled biological and chronological aging of neutrophils in cancer promotes tumor progression

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. e003495
Author(s):  
Laura A Mittmann ◽  
Florian Haring ◽  
Johanna B Schaubächer ◽  
Roman Hennel ◽  
Bojan Smiljanov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tumor Growth ◽  
Tumor Progression ◽  
Immune Cells ◽  
Malignant Tumors ◽  
Ex Vivo ◽  
Biological Aging ◽  
Malignant Neoplasms ◽  
Chronological Aging ◽  
Functional Changes

BackgroundBeyond their fundamental role in homeostasis and host defense, neutrophilic granulocytes (neutrophils) are increasingly recognized to contribute to the pathogenesis of malignant tumors. Recently, aging of mature neutrophils in the systemic circulation has been identified to be critical for these immune cells to properly unfold their homeostatic and anti-infectious functional properties. The role of neutrophil aging in cancer remains largely obscure.MethodsEmploying advanced in vivo microscopy techniques in different animal models of cancer as well as utilizing pulse-labeling and cell transfer approaches, various ex vivo/in vitro assays, and human data, we sought to define the functional relevance of neutrophil aging in cancer.ResultsHere, we show that signals released during early tumor growth accelerate biological aging of circulating neutrophils, hence uncoupling biological from chronological aging of these immune cells. This facilitates the accumulation of highly reactive neutrophils in malignant lesions and endows them with potent protumorigenic functions, thus promoting tumor progression. Counteracting uncoupled biological aging of circulating neutrophils by blocking the chemokine receptor CXCR2 effectively suppressed tumor growth.ConclusionsOur data uncover a self-sustaining mechanism of malignant neoplasms in fostering protumorigenic phenotypic and functional changes in circulating neutrophils. Interference with this aberrant process might therefore provide a novel, already pharmacologically targetable strategy for cancer immunotherapy.

scholarly journals The role of local retinoids in eliminating signs of skin aging

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (4) ◽  
pp. 60-70
Author(s):  
Vera I. Albanova
Keyword(s):  
Skin Irritation ◽  
Skin Neoplasms ◽  
Skin Aging ◽  
Biological Aging ◽  
Ultraviolet Rays ◽  
Entire Group ◽  
Chronological Aging ◽  
Slowing Down ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
The Many

Skin aging is a complex process involving both internal (chronological aging) and external (biological aging) factors. Slowing down the proliferative and immune processes in the epidermis, reducing the activity of fibroblasts and vascularization of the dermis during chronological aging lead to thinning, dryness, hypersensitivity, vulnerability and superficial wrinkles. Exposure to ultraviolet rays, pollutants, climate, and thermal factors cause keratinocyte disorganization, enhanced melanogenesis, collagen dystrophy, solar elastosis, and disorder of microcirculation. The main signs of external skin aging are deep wrinkles, sagging, pigmentation, telangiectasia, skin neoplasms. Among the local anti-aging agents, retinoids occupy a leading place, as they eliminate the main signs of skin aging. Of the entire group of retinoids, retinoic acids are the most active. However, the possibility of skin irritation limits their use. Therapeutic and cosmetic products with retinol esters (retinol palmitate) have a minimal irritating effect and can be used both for the prevention of skin aging and the elimination of its signs. Oral use of isotretinoin as an anti-aging agent is undesirable due to the many side effects and contraindications.

Salient Object Detection on Large-Scale Video Data

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shile Zhang ◽  
Jianping Fan ◽  
Hong Lu ◽  
Xiangyang Xue
Keyword(s):  
Object Detection ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Salient Object Detection ◽  
Video Data ◽  
Salient Object
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