Impact of voxel size on microCT morphometric analysis of the pumpkin toadlet

Authors

  • Caio Sorrentino dos Santos Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
  • Olga Oliveira Araujo Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
  • Hugo da Costa Romberg Júnior Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
  • Tâmara Porfíro Teixeira Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
  • Luan Ferreira Bastos Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
  • Alessandra Silveira Machado Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
  • Davi Ferreira Oliveira Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
  • Sérgio Furtado dos Reis Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)
  • Ricardo Tadeu Lopes Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15392/bjrs.v9i1A.1548

Keywords:

microCT, segmentation, Brachycephalus, voxel size, reconstruction

Abstract

Brazilian Rainforest is the habitat of many species of the genus Brachycephalus, among them is the pumpkin toadlet, Brachycephalus ephippium. X-ray microcomputed tomography is a nondestructive imaging technique which allows the visualization and analysis of internal microstructures of various samples, and has been applied on the study of these animals, enabling thorough description and characterization of new species. Brachycephalus ephippium is of particular interest for it was the first Brachycephalus species to be discovered, which makes it a common interspecies comparative basis. Cranial morphological landmarks used in biological research are very small (0.1-1mm), hence the effects of voxel size on microCT images can be relevant, and this is what was investigated in this work. Effects of reconstruction voxel size were evaluated in both visual and quantitative perspectives, which showed that an intermediary voxel size could be chosen on similar microCT applications without significant loss of information, but with great processing and storage gain, optimizing the application of the technique in such works.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

WEISBECKER, V.; RICARDS, S.; NORMAN, J. Methods for Inexpensive, Non-Intrusive Detection of Skeletal Elements in Small Zoological Specimens Using Micro-Computed Tomography, Herpetological Review, v. 40 (2), p. 165-168, 2009.

BOUXSEIN, M. L.; BOYD, S. K.; CHRISTIANSEN, B. A.; GULDBERG, R. E.; JEPSEN, J. K.; MÜLLER, R. Guidelines for Assessment of Bone Microstructure in Rodents Using Micro-Computed Tomography, Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, v. 25 (7), p. 1468-1486, 2010.

GUTIÉRREZ, Y.; OTT, D.; TÖPPERWIEN, M.; SALDITT, T.; SCHERBER, C. X-ray computed tomography and its potential in ecological research: A review of studies and optimization of specimen preparation, Ecology and Evolution, v. 8, p. 7717-7732, 2018.

SCHAMBACH, S. J.; BAG, S.; SCHILLING, L.; GRODEN, C.; BROCKMANN, M. A.; Application of micro-CT in small animal imaging, Methods, v. 50, p. 2-13, 2010.

LANDIS, E. N.; KEANE, D. T. X-ray microtomography, Materials Characterization, v. 61, p. 1305-1316, 2010.

BORNSCHEIN, M. R.; RIBEIRO, L. F.; BLACKBURN, D. C.; STANLEY, E. L.; PIE, M. R.; A new species of Brachycephalus (Anura: Brachycephalidae) from Santa Catarina, southern Brazil, PeerJ, 4:e2629, 2018.

PIE, M. R.; RIBEIRO, L. F.; CONFETTI, A. E.; NADALINE, M. J.; BORNSCHEIN, M. R. A new species of Brachycephalus (Anura: Brachycephalidae) from southern Brazil, PeerJ, 6:e5683, 2018.

GOUTTE, S.; MASON, M. J.; CHRISTENSEN-DALSGAARD, J.; MONTEALEGRE, F.; CHIVERS, B. D.; SARRIA, F. A.; ANTONIAZZI, M. M.; JARED, C.; SATO, L. A.; TOLEDO, L. F. Evidence of auditory insensitivity to vocalization frequencies in two frogs, Scientific Reports, v. 7, 2017.

RIBEIRO, L. F.; BLACKBURN, D. C.; STANLEY, E. L.; PIE, M. R.; BORNSCHEIN, M. R. Two new species of the Brachycephalus pernix group (Anura: Brachycephalidae) from the state of Paraná, southern Brazil, PeerJ, 5:e3603, 2017.

CONDEZ, T. H.; MONTEIRO, J. P. C.; HADDAD, C. F. B. Comments on the current taxonomy of Brachycephalus (Anura: Brachycephalidae), Zootaxa, v. 4290 (2), p. 395-400, 2017.

CLEMENTE-CARVALHO, R. B. G.; ALVES, A. C. R.; PEREZ, S. I.; HADDAD, C. F. B.; DOS REIS, S. F. Morphological and Molecular Variation in the Pumpkin Toadlet, Brachycephalus ephippium (Anura: Brachycephalidae), Journal of Herpetology, v. 45 (1), p. 94-99, 2011.

VIDAL, F.; ASSIS, J. T.; LOPES, R. T.; LIMA, I. 2D/3D Quantification of bone morphometric parameter changes using X-ray microtomography with different pixel sizes, Radiation Physics and Chemistry, v. 95, p. 227-229, 2014.

CHRISTIANSEN, B. A. Effect of micro-computed tomography voxel size and segmentation method on trabecular bone microstructure measures in mice, Bone Reports, v. 5, p 136-140, 2016.

KIM, D.; CHRISTOPHERSON, G. T.; DONG, X. N.; FYHRIE, D. P.; YENI, Y. N. The effect of microcomputed tomography scanning and reconstruction voxel size on the accuracy of stereological measurements in human cancellous bone, Bone, v. 35, p. 1375-1382, 2004.

SINGHAL, A.; GRANDE, J. C.; ZHOU, Y. Micro/Nano-CT for Visualization of Internal Structures, Microscopy Today, v. 21 (2), p. 16-22, 2013.

GOH, T. Y.; BASAH, S. N; YAZID, H.; SAFAR, M. J. A.; SAAD, F. S. A. Performance analysis of image thresholding: Otsu technique, Measurement, v. 114, p. 298-307, 2018.

OTSU, N. A Threshold Selection Method from Gray-Level Histograms, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, v. 9 (1), p. 62-66, 1979.

HAHN, M.; VOGEL, M.; POMPESIUS-KEMPA, M.; DELLING, G. Trabecular bone pattern factor – a new parameter for simple quantification of bone microarchitecture, Bone, v. 13 (4), p. 327-330, 1992.

Downloads

Published

2021-04-30

How to Cite

dos Santos, C. S., Araujo, O. O., Romberg Júnior, H. da C., Teixeira, T. P., Bastos, L. F., Machado, A. S., Oliveira, D. F., dos Reis, S. F., & Lopes, R. T. (2021). Impact of voxel size on microCT morphometric analysis of the pumpkin toadlet. Brazilian Journal of Radiation Sciences, 9(1A). https://doi.org/10.15392/bjrs.v9i1A.1548

Issue

Section

The Meeting on Nuclear Applications (ENAN) 2019

Most read articles by the same author(s)

<< < 1 2