An automatic recognition method of nematode survival rate based on bright field and dark field experimental images

The survival rate of experimental animals is a very important index in chemical toxicity evaluation experiments. The calculation of nematode survival rate is used in many experiments.

Traditional survival rate quantification methods require manual counting. This is a time-consuming and laborious work when using 384-well plate for high-throughput chemical toxicity assessment experiments. At present, there is a great need for an automatic method to identify the survival rate of nematodes in the experiment of chemical toxicity evaluation.

We designed an automatic nematode survival rate recognition method by combining the bright field experimental image of nematodes and the dark field image of nematodes which is captured after adding Propidium Iodide dye, and used it to calculate the nematode survival rate in different chemical environments. Experiment results show that the survival rate obtained by our automatic counting method is very similar to the survival rate obtained by manual counting.

Through several different chemical experiments, we can see that chemicals with different toxicity have different effects on the survival rate of nematodes. And the survival rate of nematodes under different chemical concentrations has an obvious gradient trend from high concentration to low concentration. In addition, our method can quantify the motility of nematodes. There are also significant differences in the motility of nematodes cultured in different chemical environments. Moreover, the nematode motility under different chemical concentrations showed an obvious gradient change trend from high concentration to low concentration.

Our study provides an accurate and efficient nematode survival rate recognition method for chemical toxicology research.