A System for Automated, Noninvasive, Morphology-Based Evaluation of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Cultures

作者：Maddah Mahnaz^*; Shoukat Mumtaz Uzma; Nassirpour Sahar; Loewke Kevin

来源：JALA, 2014, 19(5): 454-460.

DOI：10.1177/2211068214537258

• time-lapse imaging
• image analysis
• stem cell
• quality control
• noninvasive

Due to the rapid adoption and use of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in recent years, there is a need for new technologies that standardize the evaluation of iPSCs to allow the objective comparison of results across different experiments and groups. In this article, we present a noninvasive, fully automated, and analytical system for morphology-based evaluation of iPSC cultures that consists of time-lapse microscopy and novel image analysis software. The presented system acquires low-light phase-contrast images of iPSC growth collected during a period of several days in culture, measures geometrical-and texture-based features of iPSC colonies throughout time, and derives a set of six biologically relevant features to automatically rank the quality of the cell culture. In a study of 94 iPSC cultures, we demonstrated the accuracy of the system by comparing the automated ranking with an independent expert evaluation based on visual review of the time-lapse movies. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a fully automated and objective assessment of iPSC culture quality using noninvasive methods.

• 出版日期2014-10