Computational Tracking of Shear-Mediated Platelet Interactions with von Willebrand Factor

Authors

Adam Ralph, National University of Ireland, Galway
Martin Somers, Dublin City University
Jonathan Cowman, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Bruno Voisin, National University of Ireland, Galway
Emma Hogan, National University of Ireland, Galway
Hannah Dunne, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Eimear Dunne, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Barry Byrne, Dublin City University
Nigel Kent, Technological University DublinFollow
Antonio J. Ricco, Dublin City University
Dermot Kenny, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Simon Wong, National University of Ireland, GalwayFollow

Document Type

Article

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

2.3 MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, Medical engineering

Publication Details

Cardiovascular Engineering and Technology published by Springer.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13239-016-0282-x

Abstract

The imaging of shear-mediated dynamic platelet behavior interacting with surface-immobilized von Willebrand factor (vWF) has tremendous potential in characterizing changes in platelet function for clinical diagnostics purposes. However, the imaging output, a series of images representing platelets adhering and rolling on the surface, poses unique, non-trivial challenges for software algorithms that reconstruct the positional trajectories of platelets. We report on an algorithm that tracks platelets using the output of such flow run experiments, taking into account common artifacts encountered by previously-published methods, and we derive seven key metrics of platelet dynamics that can be used to characterize platelet function. Extensive testing of our method using simulated platelet flow run data was carried out to validate our tracking method and derived metrics in capturing key platelet-vWF interaction-dynamics properties. Our results show that while the number of platelets present on the imaged area is the leading cause of errors, flow run data from two experiments using whole blood samples showed that our method and metrics can detect platelet property changes/differences that are concordant with the expected biological outcome, such as inhibiting key platelet receptors such as P2Y1, glycoprotein (GP)Ib and GPIIb/IIIa. These findings support the use of our methodologies to characterize platelet function among a wide range of healthy and disease cohorts.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13239-016-0282-x

Recommended Citation

Ralph, A., Somers, M., Cowman, J. et al. Computational Tracking of Shear-Mediated Platelet Interactions with von Willebrand Factor. Cardiovasc Eng Tech 7, 389–405 (2016). DOI: 10.1007/s13239-016-0282-x

Funder

Science Foundation Ireland

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.