AUTOMATED QUANTIFICATION OF ZEBRAFISH TAIL DEFORMATION FOR HIGH-THROUGHPUT DRUG SCREENING.
Zebrafish (Danio rerio) is an important vertebrate model organism in biomedical research thanks to its ease of handling and translucent body, enablingin vivoimaging. Zebrafish embryos undergo spinal deformation upon exposure to chemical agents that inhibit DNA repair. Automated image-based quantification of spine deformation is therefore attractive for whole-organism based assays for use in early-phase drug discovery. We propose an automated method for accurate high-throughput measurement of tail deformations in multi-fish micro-plate wells. The method generates refined medial representations of partial tail-segments. Subsequently, these disjoint segments are analyzed and fused to generate complete tails. Based on estimated tail curvatures we reach a classification accuracy of 91% on individual animals as compared to known control treatment. This accuracy is increased to 95% when combining scores for fish in the same well.
Centre for Image Analysis/SciLifeLab, Uppsala University, Sweden.
Omer
O
Ishaq
Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Joseph
J
Negri
Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Mark-Anthony
MA
Bray
Centre for Image Analysis/SciLifeLab, Uppsala University, Sweden.
Alexandra
A
Pacureanu
Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA ; Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Department of Medicine, Charlestown, MA.
Randall T
RT
Peterson
Centre for Image Analysis/SciLifeLab, Uppsala University, Sweden ; Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Carolina
C
Wählby
Curvature extraction; high-throughput screening; quantitative microscopy; zebrafish (Danio rerio)