{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,15]],"date-time":"2025-10-15T17:56:47Z","timestamp":1760551007450},"reference-count":21,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"S6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,12,1]],"date-time":"2019-12-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1575158400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,12,19]],"date-time":"2019-12-19T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1576713600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":18,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["BMC Med Inform Decis Mak"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,12]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title><jats:sec>\n                <jats:title>Background<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>With the advent of new high-throughput electron microscopy techniques such as serial block-face scanning electron microscopy (SBF-SEM) and focused ion-beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) biomedical scientists can study sub-cellular structural mechanisms of heart disease at high resolution and high volume. Among several key components that determine healthy contractile function in cardiomyocytes are Z-disks or Z-lines, which are located at the lateral borders of the sarcomere, the fundamental unit of striated muscle. Z-disks play the important role of anchoring contractile proteins within the cell that make the heartbeat. Changes to their organization can affect the force with which the cardiomyocyte contracts and may also affect signaling pathways that regulate cardiomyocyte health and function. Compared to other components in the cell, such as mitochondria, Z-disks appear as very thin linear structures in microscopy data with limited difference in contrast to the remaining components of the cell.<\/jats:p>\n              <\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n                <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>In this paper, we propose to generate a 3D model of Z-disks within single adult cardiac cells from an automated segmentation of a large serial-block-face scanning electron microscopy (SBF-SEM) dataset. The proposed fully automated segmentation scheme is comprised of three main modules including \u201cpre-processing\u201d, \u201csegmentation\u201d and \u201crefinement\u201d. We represent a simple, yet effective model to perform segmentation and refinement steps. Contrast stretching, and Gaussian kernels are used to pre-process the dataset, and well-known \u201cSobel operators\u201d are used in the segmentation module.<\/jats:p>\n              <\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n                <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>We have validated our model by comparing segmentation results with ground-truth annotated Z-disks in terms of pixel-wise accuracy. The results show that our model correctly detects Z-disks with 90.56% accuracy. We also compare and contrast the accuracy of the proposed algorithm in segmenting a FIB-SEM dataset against the accuracy of segmentations from a machine learning program called <jats:italic>Ilastik<\/jats:italic> and discuss the advantages and disadvantages that these two approaches have.<\/jats:p>\n              <\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n                <jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>Our validation results demonstrate the robustness and reliability of our algorithm and model both in terms of validation metrics and in terms of a comparison with a 3D visualisation of Z-disks obtained using immunofluorescence based confocal imaging.<\/jats:p>\n              <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12911-019-0962-1","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,12,19]],"date-time":"2019-12-19T09:04:20Z","timestamp":1576746260000},"update-policy":"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":8,"title":["Automated segmentation of cardiomyocyte Z-disks from high-throughput scanning electron microscopy data"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"19","author":[{"given":"Afshin","family":"Khadangi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Eric","family":"Hanssen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Vijay","family":"Rajagopal","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,12,19]]},"reference":[{"issue":"37","key":"962_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"15180","DOI":"10.1074\/jbc.M117.786764","volume":"292","author":"F Dierck","year":"2017","unstructured":"Dierck F, et al. 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All animal procedures followed guidelines approved by the University of Auckland Ethics Committee (for animal procedures conducted in Auckland, Application Number R826).","order":1,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethics approval and consent to participate"}},{"value":"Not applicable.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Consent for publication"}},{"value":"The authors declare that they have no competing interests.","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Competing interests"}}],"article-number":"272"}}