Light-sheet laser speckle imaging for cilia motility assessment

Kai Long; Jing Liu; Shuhao Shen; Mark Thong; Deyun Wang; Nanguang Chen

doi:10.1016/j.csbj.2023.02.036

Light-sheet laser speckle imaging for cilia motility assessment

Comput Struct Biotechnol J. 2023 Feb 20:21:1661-1669. doi: 10.1016/j.csbj.2023.02.036. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Kai Long¹, Jing Liu², Shuhao Shen³, Mark Thong⁴, Deyun Wang², Nanguang Chen^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, 4 Engineering Drive 3, S117583, Singapore.
² Department of Otolaryngology, Infectious Diseases Translational Research Program, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, National University Health System, Singapore 119228, Singapore.
³ Xidian University, Guangzhou Institute of Technology, Guangzhou 510555, China.
⁴ Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, National University Hospital, National University Health System, Singapore.
⁵ NUS (Suzhou) Research Institute, No. 377 Linquan Street, Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China.

Abstract

Mucociliary clearance is an important innate defense mechanism predominantly mediated by ciliated cells in the upper respiratory tract. Ciliary motility on the respiratory epithelium surface and mucus pathogen trapping assist in maintaining healthy airways. Optical imaging methods have been used to obtain several indicators for assessing ciliary movement. Light-sheet laser speckle imaging (LSH-LSI) is a label-free and non-invasive optical technique for three-dimensional and quantitative mapping of velocities of microscopic scatterers. Here, we propose to use an inverted LSH-LSI platform to study cilia motility. We have experimentally confirmed that LSH-LSI can reliably measure the ciliary beating frequency and has the potential to provide many additional quantitative indicators for characterizing the ciliary beating pattern without labeling. For example, the asymmetry between the power stroke and the recovery stroke is apparent in the local velocity waveform. PIV (particle imaging velocimetry) analysis of laser speckle data could determine the cilia motion directions in different phases.

Keywords: Autocorrelation; Cilia; Laser speckle imaging; Motility; PIV.