Evaluation of In-Silico Labeling for Live Cell Imaging

Abstract: Today new drugs are tested on cell cultures in wells to minimize time, cost, andanimal testing. The cells are studied using microscopy in different ways and fluorescentprobes are used to study finer details than the light microscopy can observe.This is an invasive method, so instead of molecular analysis, imaging can be used.In this project, phase-contrast microscopy images of cells together with fluorescentmicroscopy images were used. We use Machine Learning to predict the fluorescentimages from the light microscopy images using a strategy called In-Silico Labeling.A Convolutional Neural Network called U-Net was trained and showed good resultson two different datasets. Pixel-wise regression, pixel-wise classification, andimage classification with one cell in each image was tested. The image classificationwas the most difficult part due to difficulties assigning good quality labels tosingle cells. Pixel-wise regression showed the best result.