Automated reconstruction of whole-embryo cell lineages by learning from sparse annotations.

Malin-Mayor, Caroline; Hirsch, Peter; Guignard, Leo; McDole, Katie; Wan, Yinan; Lemon, William C; Kainmueller, Dagmar; Keller, Philipp J et al. · Nat Biotechnol · 2023

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We present a method to automatically identify and track nuclei in time-lapse microscopy recordings of entire developing embryos. The method combines deep learning and global optimization. On a mouse dataset, it reconstructs 75.8% of cell lineages spanning 1 h, as compared to 31.8% for the competing method. Our approach improves understanding of where and when cell fate decisions are made in developing embryos, tissues, and organs.

Medical subject headings