title: Phenotype detection in morphological mutant mice using deformation features.
abstract: Large-scale global efforts are underway to knockout each of the approximately 25,000 mouse genes and interpret their roles in shaping the mammalian embryo. Given the tremendous amount of data generated by imaging mutated prenatal mice, high-throughput image analysis systems are inevitable to characterize mammalian development and diseases. Current state-of-the-art computational systems offer only differential volumetric analysis of pre-defined anatomical structures between various gene-knockout mice strains. For subtle anatomical phenotypes, embryo phenotyping still relies on the laborious histological techniques that are clearly unsuitable in such big data environment. This paper presents a system that automatically detects known phenotypes and assists in discovering novel phenotypes in muCT images of mutant mice. Deformation features obtained from non-linear registration of mutant embryo to a normal consensus average image are extracted and analyzed to compute phenotypic and candidate phenotypic areas. The presented system is evaluated using C57BL/10 embryo images. All cases of ventricular septum defect and polydactyly, well-known to be present in this strain, are successfully detected. The system predicts potential phenotypic areas in the liver that are under active histological evaluation for possible phenotype of this mouse line.
authors: School of Computing, National University of Singapore. sharmili@comp.nus.edu.sg
authors: Sharmili
authors: S
authors: Roy
authors: National ICT Australia (NICTA), Australia.
authors: Xi
authors: X
authors: Liang
authors: National Institute of Informatics, Japan.
authors: Asanobu
authors: A
authors: Kitamoto
authors: National Institute of Genetics, Japan.
authors: Masaru
authors: M
authors: Tamura
authors: National Institute of Genetics, Japan.
authors: Toshihiko
authors: T
authors: Shiroishi
authors: School of Computing, National University of Singapore.
authors: Michael S
authors: MS
authors: Brown
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004622:Embryo, Mammalian / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D051379:Mice / Q000196:embryology* / Q000235:genetics*; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D018345:Mice, Knockout; D009154:Mutation / Q000235:genetics; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D010641:Phenotype; D011296:Prenatal Diagnosis / Q000379:methods*; D011857:Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*