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

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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.

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Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by Science Foundation Ireland under Grant No.10/CE/B1821.

Conflict of Interest

A Ralph, M. Somers, J. Cowman, B. Voisin, E. Hogan, H. Dunne, E. Dunne, B. Byrne, N. Kent, A. Ricco, D. Kenny, and S. Wong declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Statement of Human Studies

This study was approved by the Medical Research Ethics Committee of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and complied with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Statement of Animal Studies

No animal studies were carried out by the authors for this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Irish Centre for High-End Computing, IT Building, National University of Ireland, University Road, Galway, Ireland

    Adam Ralph, Bruno Voisin, Emma Hogan & Simon Wong

  2. Biomedical Diagnostics Institute, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland

    Martin Somers, Barry Byrne & Antonio J. Ricco

  3. Biomedical Diagnostics Institute, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin 2, Ireland

    Jonathan Cowman, Hannah Dunne, Eimear Dunne & Dermot Kenny

  4. School of Mechanical and Design Engineering, Dublin Institute of Technology, Bolton Street, Dublin 1, Ireland

    Nigel Kent

Authors
  1. Adam Ralph
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  2. Martin Somers
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  3. Jonathan Cowman
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  4. Bruno Voisin
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  5. Emma Hogan
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  6. Hannah Dunne
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  7. Eimear Dunne
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  8. Barry Byrne
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  9. Nigel Kent
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  10. Antonio J. Ricco
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  11. Dermot Kenny
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  12. Simon Wong
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Simon Wong.

Additional information

Associate Editors Baruch Barry Lieber and Ajit P. Yoganathan oversaw the review of this article.

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

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

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