Primary ciliary dyskinesia assessment by means of optical flow analysis of phase-contrast microscopy images

Primary ciliary dyskinesia implies cilia with defective or total absence of motility, which may result in sinusitis, chronic bronchitis, bronchiectasis and male infertility. Diagnosis can be difficult and is based on an abnormal ciliary beat frequency (CBF) and beat pattern. In this paper, we present a method to determine CBF of isolated cells through the analysis of phase-contrast microscopy images, estimating cilia motion by means of an optical flow algorithm. After having analyzed 28 image sequences (14 with a normal beat pattern and 14 with a dyskinetic pattern), the normal group presented a CBF of 5.2 ± 1.6 Hz, while the dyskinetic patients presented a 1.9 ± 0.9 Hz CBF. The cutoff value to classify a dyskinetic specimen was set to 3.45 Hz (sensitivity 0.86, specificity 0.93). The presented methodology has provided excellent results to objectively diagnose PCD.