A System for Automated, Noninvasive, Morphology-Based Evaluation of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Cultures. (October 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Maddah, Mahnaz; Shoukat-Mumtaz, Uzma; Nassirpour, Sahar; Loewke, Kevin
• Is Part Of: Journal of laboratory automation. Volume 19:Number 5(2014:Oct.)
• Page Start: 454
• Page End: 460
• Publication Date: 2014-10
• Subjects: time-lapse imaging -- image analysis -- stem cell -- quality control -- noninvasive; Medical laboratory technology -- Periodicals; Laboratories -- Equipment and supplies -- Periodicals; Diagnosis, Laboratory -- Periodicals; 616.075
• DOI: 10.1177/2211068214537258
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2211-0682

Abstract

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.