Spiky: An ImageJ Plugin for Data Analysis of Functional Cardiac and Cardiomyocyte Studies

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Physiology
• Biomedical Imaging
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Cardiac research increasingly relies on image analysis for physiological and pathophysiological investigations.
• Current methods often demand specialized skills or costly software, raising concerns about reproducibility.
• Quantifying excitation-contraction coupling across scales (single cell to whole heart) is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a robust, reliable, and open-source software tool for analyzing cardiac excitation-contraction data.
• To provide a solution that addresses the need for accessible and reproducible image analysis in cardiac research.
• To enable multi-scale quantification from isolated cells to entire cardiac tissues.

Main Methods:

• Development of 'Spiky,' a free and open-source ImageJ plugin.
• The plugin is written in ImageJ Macro Language and JAVA, ensuring cross-platform compatibility (Windows, Mac, Linux).
• Designed to analyze both 2D (XT) and video (XYT) data from various cardiac experimental setups.

Main Results:

• Spiky effectively detects and analyzes peaks in experimental data streams, including action potentials, calcium transients, and contraction data.
• The software facilitates rapid and easy analysis of data from confocal microscopy and optical mapping experiments.
• Demonstrated capability to analyze data across different scales, from single cells to whole hearts.

Conclusions:

• Spiky offers a comprehensive and user-friendly interface for processing and analyzing cardiac physiology research data.
• The open-source nature promotes accessibility and reproducibility in the field.
• Provides a valuable tool for researchers investigating cardiac function and disease.