Semiautomatic and rapid quantification of heartbeat parameters in Drosophila using optical coherence tomography imaging.

We report a semiautomatic algorithm that is specialized for rapid analysis of beat-to-beat contraction-relaxation parameters of the heart in Drosophila. The presented algorithm adapts the general graph theoretical image segmentation algorithm and a histogram-based thresholding algorithm, which can measure many cardiac parameters, including heart rate, heart period, diastolic and systolic intervals, and end-diastolic and end-systolic areas. Additionally, dynamic cardiac functions, such as arrhythmia index and percent fractional shortening, can be automatically calculated for all the recorded heartbeats over significant periods of time.