title: Automatic stage identification of Drosophila egg chamber based on DAPI images.
abstract: The Drosophila egg chamber, whose development is divided into 14 stages, is a well-established model for developmental biology. However, visual stage determination can be a tedious, subjective and time-consuming task prone to errors. Our study presents an objective, reliable and repeatable automated method for quantifying cell features and classifying egg chamber stages based on DAPI images. The proposed approach is composed of two steps: 1) a feature extraction step and 2) a statistical modeling step. The egg chamber features used are egg chamber size, oocyte size, egg chamber ratio and distribution of follicle cells. Methods for determining the on-site of the polytene stage and centripetal migration are also discussed. The statistical model uses linear and ordinal regression to explore the stage-feature relationships and classify egg chamber stages. Combined with machine learning, our method has great potential to enable discovery of hidden developmental mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4370, USA.
authors.forename: Dongyu
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4510, USA.
authors.forename: Qiuping
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4330, USA.
authors.forename: Qian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4510, USA.
authors.forename: Washington
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Mio
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4370, USA.
authors.forename: Wu-Min
authors.initials: WM
authors.lastname: Deng
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002465:Cell Movement; D004330:Drosophila / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism; D005260:Female; D005854:Germ Cells / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D018095:Germ-Line Mutation; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence; D008938:Mitosis; D009865:Oocytes / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D009866:Oogenesis; D006080:Ovarian Follicle / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D010053:Ovary / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism