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RTExtract: time-series NMR spectra quantification based on 3D surface ridge tracking
Open accessAbstract
Motivation: Time-series nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has advanced our knowledge about metabolic dynamics. Before analyzing compounds through modeling or statistical methods, chemical features need to be tracked and quantified. However, because of peak overlap and peak shifting, the available protocols are time consuming at best or even impossible for some regions in NMR spectra. Results: We introduce Ridge Tracking-based Extract (RTExtract), a computer vision-based algorithm, to quantify time-series NMR spectra. The NMR spectra of multiple time points were formulated as a 3D surface. Candidate points were first filtered using local curvature and optima, then connected into ridges by a greedy algorithm. Interactive steps were implemented to refine results. Among 173 simulated ridges, 115 can be tracked (RMSD < 0.001). For reproducing previous results, RTExtract took less than 2 h instead of ∼48 h, and two instead of seven parameters need tuning. Multiple regions with overlapping and changing chemical shifts are accurately tracked. Availability and implementation: Source code is freely available within Metabolomics toolbox GitHub repository (https://github.com/artedison/Edison_Lab_Shared_Metabolomics_UGA/tree/master/metabolomics_toolbox/code/ridge_tracking) and is implemented in MATLAB and R. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
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![Fig. 2. Illustration of the RTExtract algorithm. The algorithm is presented based on an example time-series NMR dataset, which was measured under aerobic conditions (A) (Judge et al., 2019). The stack spectral plot (A) shows changes of whole NMR spectra (X-axis chemical shift δ) through time (Y-axis), and each time point is distinguished by a different line color as in all stack spectral plot in this article. Two regions (ppm [5.5, 8.5] and [1.3, 2.2]) are expanded to show spectral complexity. (B) A column slice (ppm [1.30, 1.35], indicated as orange box and arrow in (A) is chosen as show case for RTExtract (B–F). H and K curvatures were computed based on the 7 by 7 window (B) around each point, which was used to define ridge points (H < 0 and |K|<1). (C) To form candidate points (red points), these ridge points are intersected with local maxima and combined with the first Nmax global maximal points for each spectrum. (D) These points were connected in two steps by a greedy method to form ridges (red line). The first step was based on chemical shift distance (Lgap) between points, and the second step was based on distance and angles. (E) Ridges were refined and manually selected for feature quantification. For the red ridge in (E), intensity and chemical shift (δ) were plotted against time (F). The intensity is measured in arbitrary units (AUs), time is measured in hours, and chemical shift (δ) is measured in ppm. Details on the RTExtract algorithm and tuning parameters can be found in Sections 2.1 and 2.2](/paper-figures/1905a8589260406d93821542cbf45da4/rtextract-time-series-nmr-spectra-quantification-based-on-3d-surface-ridge-figure-2.jpg)
![Fig. 3. Evaluation of the RTExtract algorithm on simulated datasets. (A) Compound quantification for all ridge points was plotted. For each ridge peak, extracted compound concentrations normalized to DSS (Y-axis, [C]ex) were plotted against simulated compound concentration (X-axis, [C]sim). The black diagonal represents perfect quantification and its slope is 1. Four overlapped peaks mapped to four compounds [1: alanine (blue); 2: glycerol (pink); 3: serine (green); 4: ethanol (purple)] were selected as examples (A–C). All other ridge overlapped peaks are in gray. (B) In the stack spectra, one spectrum was highlight in black, which was then decomposed into compound peaks involved in the overlap (C). In (C), the black line is the full simulated spectrum with all the compound peaks. (D) The acetate peak was simulated with chemical shift variation under different pH conditions and overlapped with another peak. (E) The extracted concentrations ([C]ex) were plotted against simulated concentrations ([C]sim). (F) Extracted chemical shifts (δex) were plotted against simulated chemical shift (δsim). Performance of concentration and chemical shift estimation with more compounds can be found in Supplementary Figures S5 and S6. Compound concentration was simulated with arbitrary unit (AU) and chemical shift δ was evaluated in ppm](/paper-figures/2c5733167a624cff84109547bc298854/rtextract-time-series-nmr-spectra-quantification-based-on-3d-surface-ridge-figure-3.jpg)


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“A limiting factor of the utilization of such unique tools is that complex real-time and in vivo data require dedicated software to investigate them, however nowadays this surge in data collection surpasses the current capacity to extract and interpret information effectively and computational tools are emerging.150–152”
From Connecting metabolome and phenotype: recent advances in functional metabolomics tools for the identification of bioactive natural products (2024) · cites this paper as [152]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Wu, Y., Judge, M. T., Arnold, J., Bhandarkar, S. M., & Edison, A. S.
- Affiliations
- Institute of Bioinformatics
- Department of Genetics
- Department of Computer Science
- University of Georgia (US)
- Corresponding author
- Edison, Arthur S
- Venue
- Bioinformatics
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2020-07-12
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 20
- Pages
- 5068-5075
- ISSN
- 1367-4803 (ISSN-L)
- 1367-4811
- PMC
- PMC7755419
- OpenAlex
- W3031610872
- Cited by
- 8
- References
- 30
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 0.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Bioinformatics (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation [NSF (1713746)
- Georgia Research Alliance
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Metabolomics and Mass Spectrometry Studies
- Physical Sciences › Chemistry › Spectroscopy › Advanced NMR Techniques and Applications
- Physical Sciences › Chemistry › Analytical Chemistry › Spectroscopy and Chemometric Analyses
- Keywords
- NMR quantification, 3D surface analysis, peak overlap, peak shift, metabolic dynamics, computer vision, greedy algorithm, metabolomics
- MeSH terms
- Algorithms, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Software, Metabolomics
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