Analysis of in vivo uterine peristalsis in the non-pregnant female mouse

Abstract

Uterine peristalsis due to spontaneous contractions of the myometrial smooth muscles has important roles in pre-implantation processes of intra-uterine sperm transport to the fertilization site, and then embryo transport to the implantation sites. We developed a new objective methodology to study in vivo uterine peristalsis in female mice during the pro-oestrus phase. The acquisition procedure of the uterine organ is remote without interfering with the organ function. The uniqueness of the new approach is that video images of physiological pattern were converted using image processing and new algorithms to biological time-dependent signals that can be processed with existing algorithms for signal processing. Using this methodology we found that uterine peristalsis in the pro-oestrus mouse is in the range of 0.008–0.029 Hz, which is about one contraction per minute and with fairly symmetric contractions that occasionally propagate caudally. This rate of contractions is similar to that of human uterine peristalsis acquired in vivo , which is important information for a popular animal model.

Quantitative imaging of tongue kinematics during infant feeding and adult swallowing reveals highly conserved patterns

“…Noise reduction and image improvement were performed with an anisotropic diffusion filter. In the next step, the contours of the tongue and palate were traced on all the images by employing the vector field convolution method (i.e., snakes or active contour model) (Elad et al, 2014; Gora et al, 2018; Zhang et al, 2019) that generated accurate smooth contours within a few iterations (Figure 2a,b). This procedure requires manual initialization by marking a few points on the first image.…”

“…The tongue kinematics was analyzed from in vivo submental ultrasound video clips. The computational methods were similar to those used in our previous studies where we converted video clips of medical images into time-dependent biological data that can be analyzed in the time-frequencyspace domains for the enhancement of physiological knowledge (Elad et al, 2014;Eytan et al, 1999;Gora et al, 2016Gora et al, , 2018Meirzon et al, 2011;Zhang et al, 2019). The experimental and objective computational approach to explore tongue kinematics during infant feeding or adult swallowing is schematically shown in the flow chart depicted in Figure 1.…”

“…Recently, we utilized similar methods to extract the tongue and palate contours from ultrasound video clips and developed an objective method to quantify the infant's tongue kinematics during breastfeeding (Elad et al, 2014). More recently, we implemented methods previously used to analyze the periodicity of murine uterine horn contractions to enable the analysis of the instantaneous spectrum of motility (Zhang et al, 2019). Here, we employed the objective analysis to explore the instantaneous kinematics at any location along the tongue during several conditions of infant feeding and adult swallowing of a liquid bolus.…”

Automated Identification Model of Ground-Glass Opacity in CT-Scan Image by COVID-19

“…The process is carried out by scaling the matrix elements using a linear transformation, each pixel with the lowest value is converted to a value of 0, and the highest pixel value is converted to a value of 1. The results of this stage will produce an image with a pixel value of double-type data [41]. The equation used in this process is presented in Formula ( 11) [42].…”

Bioengineering in women's health: part I

“…In the next article, Zhang et al [10] present a novel imagebased technique to quantify the spontaneous contractions of uterine myometrial smooth muscle in female mice during the pro-oestrus phase. The motivation for the study is to understand the basic uterine mechanisms to promote sperm motility, implantation and pregnancy.…”