The tumor microenvironment consists of several components like tumor cells, normal healthy cells, extracellular matrix, secreted factors, and other non-cellular components. The interaction among these components is crucial for tumor progression and metastasis. Identifying the presence of tumor cells among the normal healthy cells during the initial stages of cancer will aid in its early detection and treatment. One of the main features that differentiates a cancer cell from a normal healthy cell distinctively is its morphology. In this study, the effectiveness of machine learning algorithms is evaluated in classifying cells co-cultured in a Petri dish. To achieve this, digital holographic microscopy is used to capture the quantitative phase images of human dermal fibroblast and A375 human melanoma cancer cells co-cultured at 1:1, 1:2, and 2:1 ratios. Cell segmentation was performed using a cumulative learning approach. Subsequently, morphological and phase-based features were extracted to train the machine learning algorithms for binary classification of cells. Phase-based features in addition to the morphological features were found to provide improved performance of the classifier. The classifier demonstrated an average F1-score of 0.9 during testing.
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