1. VUMC Soil Worm Activity Monitor
Mohd Fakhrurrazi Mohd Salleh (EE)
Suhaili Harun (EE)
Amani Rafie (CompE)
Saiful Azlan Adanan (BME)
February 17, 2005

2. Requirements Worms & Tray Microscope CCD camera & Processor
Computer & Monitor
Picolo Capture Card & software
Adobe Premiere software
Matlab

3. Solution Requirements
Easy to use
Easy to modify
Fast
More accurate measurements

4. Worm (Caenorhabditis elegans)
A free-living nematode, ~1 mm
in length, which lives in a
temperate soil environment
Has the advantage of being a
multicellular organism, which
is simple enough to be studied in great detail
One of the simplest organisms with a nervous system (neurobiology)
About 200 sinusoidal movements per minute

5. Computer Specifications
Pentium 4 Processor (3.20GHz)
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
1GB SDRAM
Dell Quietkey Keyboard & Mouse
128MB ATI Radeon X300 SE Graphic Card
400GB RAID 1 HardDrive
3.5 Floppy Drive
Network Card
Single Drive CD/DVD Burner

6. Hardware Configuration

7. Operational Concept
Turn on the Microscope (power supply), Computer, C-Mount Camera Processor, and the Monitor.
Fill up 40 MicroLiter of distilled water into one well in the tray
Place the tray with worms under the microscope and place a worm from that tray into the water-filled well (in step 1) using a pick

8. Operational Concept Cont.
Open the Picolo-Card software in the computer and record a movie of the worm (until worm dies) from the microscope.
Start the image processing by opening MatLab and load the movie file recorded (in step 4) and run the program.
You will now obtain graphical results [[ Pixel speed, total pixel movement, velocity, absolute difference of frames, and area covered ]]
Repeat steps 2-6 for a different worm.

9. Image Processing Analysis
Acquire frames from video for few seconds
Analysis:
Velocity of the worm
Area
Take the difference of the pixel values between the first two frames (noise elimination)
Determine coordinate of centroid
Take another difference for the next second frames
Determine coordinate of the next centroid and compare to get the displacement
Divide with time to acquire its velocity

10. Example of an image

11. Segmented image
segmented
original

12. Acquire Two Frames
Frame 1
Frame 2

13. |Frame 1 – Frame 2|
Frame 1
Frame 2

14. Determine the centroid
Calculated centroid (146,147)
Expected centroid

15. Determine the centroid
Calculated centroid (146,147)
New calculated centroid (173,155) y
Expected centroid x

16. Determine the centroid
Calculated centroid (173,155) – filtered once
New calculated centroid (203,172) – filtered twice y
Expected centroid x

17. Determine the centroid
New calculated centroid (203,172) – filtered twice
Expected centroid = new calculated centroid (202,173) y x

18. Determine the velocity
For worm 1:
Average velocity = pps
Area = 949 pixels

19. Determine the velocity
For worm 2:
Average velocity = pps
Area = 1181 pixels

20. Determine the velocity
For worm 2:
Average velocity = pps
Area = 583 pixels

21. Comparison of the worms
Observation
Fast
Very Slow
Average Velocity (pps)
28.045
15.30
Area (pixels)
949
1181
583
Conclusion
Second fastest worm
Fastest worm
Slow worm

22. Future Work Ordering the adapter from MEIJI Software development
Capturing images of the worm
Hardware setup