title: A system for automated, noninvasive, morphology-based evaluation of induced pluripotent stem cell cultures.
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.
authors.affiliation: Cellogy, Inc., Menlo Park, CA, USA mmaddah@alum.mit.edu.
authors.forename: Mahnaz
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Maddah
authors.affiliation: Cellogy, Inc., Menlo Park, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Uzma
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Shoukat-Mumtaz
authors.affiliation: Cellogy, Inc., Menlo Park, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Sahar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nassirpour
authors.affiliation: Cellogy, Inc., Menlo Park, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Loewke
mesh_terms: D057205:Automation, Laboratory / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D003584:Cytological Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D057026:Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology*; D018715:Microscopy, Video / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods
keywords: image analysis; noninvasive; quality control; stem cell; time-lapse imaging