AUTOMATED QUANTIFICATION OF ZEBRAFISH TAIL DEFORMATION FOR HIGH-THROUGHPUT DRUG SCREENING.

Proc IEEE Int Symp Biomed Imaging
Authors
Abstract

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) is an important vertebrate model organism in biomedical research thanks to its ease of handling and translucent body, enabling in vivo imaging. Zebrafish embryos undergo spinal deformation upon exposure to chemical agents that inhibit DNA repair. Automated image-based quantification of spine deformation is therefore attractive for whole-organism based assays for use in early-phase drug discovery. We propose an automated method for accurate high-throughput measurement of tail deformations in multi-fish micro-plate wells. The method generates refined medial representations of partial tail-segments. Subsequently, these disjoint segments are analyzed and fused to generate complete tails. Based on estimated tail curvatures we reach a classification accuracy of 91% on individual animals as compared to known control treatment. This accuracy is increased to 95% when combining scores for fish in the same well.

Year of Publication
2013
Journal
Proc IEEE Int Symp Biomed Imaging
Pages
902-905
Date Published
2013
ISSN
1945-7928
DOI
10.1109/ISBI.2013.6556621
PubMed ID
24499782
PubMed Central ID
PMC3909804
Links
Grant list
R01 GM095672 / GM / NIGMS NIH HHS / United States