Alteration of lens and retina textures from mice embryos with folic acid deficiency: image processing analysis

• Published in: Graefe's archive for clinical and experimental ophthalmology Vol. 257; no. 1; pp. 111 - 123
• Main Authors: Sijilmassi, Ouafa, López-Alonso, José Manuel, Barrio Asensio, María Del Carmen, Del Río Sevilla, Aurora
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.01.2019; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Basic Science; Collagen; Collagen (type IV); Deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA; DNA biosynthesis; Embryogenesis; Eye lens; Folic acid; Fourier analysis; Grain size; Image processing; Immunohistochemistry; Laminin; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Ophthalmology; Protein biosynthesis; Retina; Ribonucleic acid; RNA; Segmentation; Transcription; Laminin-1; Folic acid deficiency; Retina; Matlab texture analysis; Lens; Type IV collagen
• ISSN: 0721-832X; 1435-702X
• DOI: 10.1007/s00417-018-4176-5

Purpose Folic acid (FA) is an essential vitamin for embryonic development. It plays particularly a critical role in RNA, DNA and protein synthesis. On the other hand, the collagen IV and laminin-1 are important proteins during embryonic development. This study was done to find if FA deficiency at a short and a long term in mothers could alter the tissue texture of retina and lens of the progeny. Methods Collagen IV and laminin-1 were localized by immunohistochemistry in the lens and retina of the FA-deficient embryos. To carry out the image processing, texture segmentation was performed through canny edge detection and Fourier transform (FT). We defined a parameter, the grain size, to describe the texture of the lens and retina. A bootstrap method to estimate the distribution and confidence intervals of the mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis of the grain size has been developed. Results Analysis through image processing using Matlab showed changes in the grain size between control- and FA-deficient groups in both studied molecules. Measures of texture based on FT exhibited changes in the directionality and arrangements of type IV collagen and laminin-1. Conclusions Changes introduced by FA deficiency were visible in the short term (2 weeks) and evident in the long term (8 weeks) in both grain size and orientation of fibre structures in the tissues analysed (lens and retina). This is the first work devoted to study the effect of FA deficit in the texture of eye tissues using image processing techniques.