Reproducible image-based profiling with Pycytominer.

Serrano, Erik; Chandrasekaran, Srinivas Niranj; Bunten, Dave; Brewer, Kenneth I; Tomkinson, Jenna; Kern, Roshan; Bornholdt, Michael; Fleming, Stephen J et al. · Nat Methods · 2025

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Advances in high-throughput microscopy have enabled the rapid acquisition of large numbers of high-content microscopy images. Next, whether by deep learning or classical algorithms, image analysis pipelines commonly produce single-cell features. To process these single cells for downstream applications, we present Pycytominer, a user-friendly, open-source Python package that implements the bioinformatics steps key to image-based profiling. We demonstrate Pycytominer's usefulness in a machine-learning project to predict nuisance compounds that cause undesirable cell injuries.

Medical subject headings