Learning to segment cell nuclei in phase-contrast microscopy from fluorescence images for drug discovery

Abstract

We describe a method for analyzing geometrical properties of cell nuclei from phase contrast microscopy images. This is useful in drug discovery for quantifying the effect of candidate chemical compounds, bypassing the need for fluorescence imaging. Fluorescence images are then only used for training our nuclei segmentation, avoiding the need for the time consuming expert annotations. Geometry based descriptors are calculated and aggregated and fed into a classifier to distinguish the different types of chemical treatments. The drug treatment can be distinguished from no treatment with accuracy better than 95% from fluorescence images and better than 77% from phase contrast images.