RT Journal Article
T1 Development and Application of Automated Vocal Fold Tracking Software in a Rat Surgical Model
A1 Pennington-FitzGerald, William
A1 Joshi, Abhinav
A1 Honzel, Emily
A1 Hernández Morato, Ignacio
A1 Pitman, Michael J
A1 Moayedi, Yalda
AB ObjectiveThe rat is a widely used model for studying vocal fold (VF) function after recurrent laryngeal nerve injury, but common techniques for evaluating rat VF motion remain subjective and imprecise. To address this, we developed a software package, called RatVocalTracker1.0 (RVT1.0), to quantify VF motion and tested it on rats with iatrogenic unilateral vocal fold paralysis (VFP).MethodsA deep neural network was trained to identify the positions of the VFs and arytenoid cartilages (ACs) in transoral laryngoscope videos of the rat glottis. Software was developed to estimate glottic midline, VF displacement, VF velocity, and AC angle. The software was applied to laryngoscope videos of adult rats before and after right recurrent and superior laryngeal nerve transection (N = 15; 6M, 9F). All software calculated metrics were compared before and after injury and validated against manually calculated metrics.ResultsRVT1.0 accurately tracked and quantified VF displacement, VF velocity, and AC angle. Significant differences were found before and after surgery for all RVT1.0 calculated metrics. There was strong agreement between programmatically and manually calculated measures. Automated analysis was also more efficient than nearly all manual methods.ConclusionThis approach provides fast, accurate assessment of VF motion in rats with minimal labor and allows for quantitative comparison of lateral differences in movement. Through this novel analysis method, we can differentiate healthy movement from unilateral VFP. RVT1.0 is open-source and will be a valuable tool for researchers using the rat model for laryngology research.
PB Wiley
YR 2024
FD 2024
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/120939
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/120939
LA eng
NO Pennington‐FitzGerald W, Joshi A, Honzel E, Hernandez‐Morato I, Pitman MJ, Moayedi Y. Development and Application of Automated Vocal Fold Tracking Software in a Rat Surgical Model. The Laryngoscope 2024;134:340–6. https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.30930.
DS Docta Complutense
RD 19 dic 2025