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XYT Event Detector is a novel biophysics tool. The program was created by Alexander Maltsev at the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Science at the National Institute of Aging, National Institutes of Health. The program was tuned to work with real cells by several researchers: Oliver Monfredi, Mary S. Kim, and Kenta Tsutsui. In short, XYTEventDetector detects and analyses time-dependent increases in intensity of a fluorescent indicator recorded by high-speed 2D cameras. Specifically, the program was developed and tuned to detect Local Calcium Releases in cardiac pacemaker cells. It works with stacks of tif images of Ca signals measured in living cells. The consecutive images in the stack represent the intensity of local Ca dynamics measured with a fixed sampling rate by a high-speed camera and a fluorescent Ca indicator. When pacemaker cells generate a cardiac impulse, the action potential induces a global Ca increase in cytoplasmic Ca (dubbed AP-induced Ca transient). The program identifies and eliminates global signal shifts and transients and detects only local signals.
The program interface and input/output parameters were tuned to work with SA node cells and specific recording conditions, including Ca indicator Fluo-4, 63x oil-emersion lens, and high-speed CCD camera (Hamamatsu C9100-12). Thus, the program is still in its beta stage and its functionality needs further tuning, especially if another cell type, Ca indicator, or high-speed camera is used.
Installation of XYTEventDetector for Windows
1.
2. Double-click XYTEventDetectorSetup.msi to install the program.
Code Development
Since the program was created at the NIH, a U.S. Government agency, it belongs to a public domain and can be freely distributed for the purpose of improving healthcare in the U.S. and worldwide. We provide the entire original program code in C++ and all libraries (OpenGL, tif file handling, etc.) that allow the code compilation within the Visual Studio 2010. The result of the compilation is a msi setup file that can be used to install the program on a computer with a Windows operating system (we used Windows 7).
1. Download the ZIP folder with code and libraries in the link below.
2. Unzip the directory.
3. Start Visual Studio and choose in File Menu Open à Project/Solution
4. Choose file XYTEventDetector.vcxproj in unzipped folder structure in directory
…XYTEventDetector\XYTEventDetector
5. Edit the code and re-build the project
6. Please then locate freshly compiled file installation file XYTEventDetectorSetup.msi in directory …\XYTEventDetector\XYTEventDetector_Setup\Release
Download
Data Example
Download a
User Guide
Download the
Manuscript and Citation
Please cite the following paper when employing this tool in publications or other forms of media. If you use or develop further our software, please give a credit to our work by citing our research paper.
Maltsev AV, Parsons SP, Kim MS, Tsutsui K, Stern MD, Lakatta EG, Maltsev VA, Monfredi O. (2017) Computer algorithms for automated detection and analysis of local Ca2+ releases in spontaneously beating cardiac pacemaker cells . PLoS ONE 12(7): e0179419.