A Dynamic Survival Detection and Analysis System for Mosquito Larvae Viability in Drug Assays

SLAS Technol. 2017 Oct;22(5):557-564. doi: 10.1177/2472630317698633. Epub 2017 Mar 17.

Abstract

Bioinformatics studies have emerged in the domain of larval behavior analysis in recent years. A dynamic survival detection and analysis system for automatically monitoring a large amount of mosquito larvae in bioassays with multiwell plates by acquiring and processing videos is proposed in this article. In our system, equipment is designed for acquiring the video of the mosquito larvae in several multiwell plates simultaneously by a camera, and a video analysis module is developed for detecting the survival states of larvae in each well in real time. Also, a novel model and a new image registration algorithm are proposed to accurately obtain the survival state by analyzing the larval motion activities and the weights of larvae in each well. In our experiments, several spinosad bioassays against 2-instar Aedes aegypti with 96-well plates are used to evaluate the proposed system, and the accuracy of the larval survival state in our system is more than 85%. Moreover, this investigation has indicated that the developed system not only can be used in the mosquito larval bioassays but also can be suitable to detect and analyze the behaviors of large amount of other larvae.

Keywords: image registration; mosquito control; robotics and instrumentation; survival rate; systems.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aedes / drug effects*
  • Animals
  • Automation, Laboratory / instrumentation
  • Automation, Laboratory / methods*
  • Biological Assay / instrumentation
  • Biological Assay / methods*
  • Drug Combinations
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / instrumentation
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Insecticides / pharmacology*
  • Larva / drug effects
  • Macrolides / pharmacology
  • Survival Analysis*
  • Video Recording / instrumentation
  • Video Recording / methods*

Substances

  • Drug Combinations
  • Insecticides
  • Macrolides
  • spinosad