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An automated system for the objective evaluation of human gustatory sensitivity using tongue biopotential recordings.

ABSTRACT: The goal of this work is to develop an automatic system for the evaluation of the gustatory sensitivity of patients using an electrophysiological recording of the response of bud cells to taste stimuli. In particular, the study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and limitations of supervised classifiers in the discrimination between subjects belonging to the three 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) taster categories (supertasters, medium tasters, and non-tasters), exploiting features extracted from electrophysiological recordings of the tongue. Thirty-nine subjects (equally divided into the three PROP status classes by standard non-objective scaling methods) underwent a non-invasive, differential, biopotential recording of their tongues during stimulation with PROP by using a custom-made, flexible, silver electrode. Two different classifiers were trained to recognize up to seven different features extracted from the recorded depolarization signal. The classification results indicate that the identified set of features allows to distinguish between PROP tasters and non-tasters (average accuracy of 80% ± 18% and up to 94% ± 15% when only supertasters and non-tasters are considered), but medium tasters were difficult to identify. However, these apparent classification errors are related to uncertainty in the labeling procedures, which are based on non-objective tests, in which the subjects provided borderline evaluations. Thus, using the proposed method, it is possible, for the first time, to automatically achieve objective PROP taster status identification with high accuracy. The simplicity of the recording technique allows for easy reproduction of the experimental setting; thus the technique can be used in future studies to evaluate other gustatory stimuli. The proposed approach represents the first objective and automatic method to directly measure human gustatory responses and a milestone for physiological taste studies, with applications ranging from basic science to food tasting evaluations.

SUBMITTER: Pani D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5540613 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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An automated system for the objective evaluation of human gustatory sensitivity using tongue biopotential recordings.

Pani Danilo D Usai Ilenia I Cosseddu Piero P Melis Melania M Sollai Giorgia G Crnjar Roberto R Tomassini Barbarossa Iole I Raffo Luigi L Bonfiglio Annalisa A

PloS one 20170802 8

The goal of this work is to develop an automatic system for the evaluation of the gustatory sensitivity of patients using an electrophysiological recording of the response of bud cells to taste stimuli. In particular, the study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and limitations of supervised classifiers in the discrimination between subjects belonging to the three 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) taster categories (supertasters, medium tasters, and non-tasters), exploiting features extracted from ele ...[more]

PMID: 28767651

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Project description:BackgroundThe evaluation of information retrieval techniques has traditionally relied on human judges to determine which documents are relevant to a query and which are not. This protocol is used in the Text Retrieval Evaluation Conference (TREC), organized annually for the past 15 years, to support the unbiased evaluation of novel information retrieval approaches. The TREC Genomics Track has recently been introduced to measure the performance of information retrieval for biomedical applications.ResultsWe describe two protocols for evaluating biomedical information retrieval techniques without human relevance judgments. We call these protocols No Title Evaluation (NT Evaluation). The first protocol measures performance for focused searches, where only one relevant document exists for each query. The second protocol measures performance for queries expected to have potentially many relevant documents per query (high-recall searches). Both protocols take advantage of the clear separation of titles and abstracts found in Medline. We compare the performance obtained with these evaluation protocols to results obtained by reusing the relevance judgments produced in the 2004 and 2005 TREC Genomics Track and observe significant correlations between performance rankings generated by our approach and TREC. Spearman's correlation coefficients in the range of 0.79-0.92 are observed comparing bpref measured with NT Evaluation or with TREC evaluations. For comparison, coefficients in the range 0.86-0.94 can be observed when evaluating the same set of methods with data from two independent TREC Genomics Track evaluations. We discuss the advantages of NT Evaluation over the TRels and the data fusion evaluation protocols introduced recently.ConclusionOur results suggest that the NT Evaluation protocols described here could be used to optimize some search engine parameters before human evaluation. Further research is needed to determine if NT Evaluation or variants of these protocols can fully substitute for human evaluations.

Project description:In an evaluation of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), objectivity may be poor because the evaluation is determined by the patient's subjective assessment. In such cases, management of neuropathy may be delayed and CIPN symptoms may become severe. In this pilot study, we attempted an objective evaluation of CIPN using a quantitative pain measurement system (Pain Vision®).The subjects were patients with gynecologic cancer who underwent chemotherapy using taxane and platinum drugs. The grade of the peripheral sensory nerve disorder was based on the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTC-AE) ver. 4.0 and was evaluated before the initiation of therapy and up to six chemotherapy cycles. A symptom scale assessed by the patients using a peripheral neuropathy questionnaire (PNQ) was also evaluated. Simultaneously during these evaluations, graded electric current was applied from the probe to a fingertip and measured both the lowest perceptible current and lowest current perceived as pain by Pain Vision®. From these values, the pain degree was calculated from the following formula: (pain perception current value - lowest perceptible current value) ÷ lowest perceptible current value × 100. We compared the pain degrees by Pain Vision® during CIPN development with the value obtained before chemotherapy initiation.Forty-one patients were enrolled. In the evaluation by a medical professional, 28 (64.3%) patients developed CIPN during 2.5 ± 1.1 chemotherapy cycles (mean ± standard deviation). The pain degree by Pain Vision® at grade 1 and 2 CIPN development according to the evaluation (CTC-AE) was significantly decreased compared to that before chemotherapy initiation (126.0 ± 114.5 vs. 69.8 ± 46.8, p = 0.001, and 126.0 ± 114.5 vs. 32.8 ± 32.6, p = 0.004). Changes in the pain degree by Pain Vision® were also found during scale B and C, D CIPN development in the patient evaluation (PNQ) (115.9 ± 112.4 vs. 70.6 ± 56.5, p = 0.005, and 115.9 ± 112.4 vs. 46.3 ± 42.9, p = 0.004). In the 13 patients in whom CIPN did not occur, no significant decrease in the pain degree by Pain Vision® was detected (p = 0.764). There was no discontinuation of the measurements because of adverse events such as discomfort from the electric current.The decrease in the pain degree measured by Pain Vision® was associated with the onset of CIPN symptoms. Particularly, detection of CIPN by Pain Vision® was possible, though most of the CIPN that occurred was low grade or mild symptom. Pain Vision® might become a noninvasive and convenient objective CIPN detection tool to supplement subjective CIPN evaluation.The study approval number in the institution; H25-140. Registered December 17, 2013.

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An automated system for the objective evaluation of human gustatory sensitivity using tongue biopotential recordings.

Publications

An automated system for the objective evaluation of human gustatory sensitivity using tongue biopotential recordings.

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