Biology subjects

Sintorn, I.-M.

Publications and source records attributed to Sintorn, I.-M..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2022

Is brightfield all you need for mechanism of action prediction?

Fluorescence staining techniques, such as Cell Painting, together with fluorescence microscopy have proven invaluable for visualizing and quantifying the effects that drugs and other perturbations have on cultured cells. However, fluorescence microscopy is expensive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive, and the stains applied can be cytotoxic, interfering with the activity under study. The simplest form of microscopy, brightfield microscopy, lacks these downsides, but the images produced have low contrast and the cellular compartments are difficult to discern. Nevertheless, by harnessing deep learning, these brightfield images may still be sufficient for various predictive purposes. In this study, we compared the predictive performance of models trained on fluorescence images to those trained on brightfield images for predicting the mechanism of action (MoA) of different drugs. We also extracted CellProfiler features from the fluorescence images and used them to benchmark the performance. Overall, we found comparable and correlated predictive performance for the two imaging modalities. This is promising for future studies of MoAs in time-lapse experiments.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2022

SimSearch: A Human-in-the-Loop Learning Framework for Fast Detection of Regions of Interest in Microscopy Images

ObjectiveLarge-scale microscopy-based experiments often result in images with rich but sparse information content. An experienced microscopist can visually identify regions of interest (ROIs), but this becomes a cumbersome task with large datasets. Here we present SimSearch, a framework for quick and easy user-guided training of a deep neural model aimed at fast detection of ROIs in large-scale microscopy experiments. MethodsThe user manually selects a small number of patches representing different classes of ROIs. This is followed by feature extraction using a pre-trained deep-learning model, and interactive patch selection pruning, resulting in a smaller set of clean (user approved) and larger set of noisy (unapproved) training patches of ROIs and background. The pre-trained deep-learning model is thereafter first trained on the large set of noisy patches, followed by refined training using the clean patches. ResultsThe framework is evaluated on fluorescence microscopy images from a large-scale drug screening experiment, brightfield images of immunohistochemistry-stained patient tissue samples, and malaria-infected human blood smears, as well as transmission electron microscopy images of cell sections. Compared to state-of-the-art and manual/visual assessment, the results show similar performance with maximal flexibility and minimal a priori information and user interaction. ConclusionsSimSearch quickly adapts to different data sets, which demonstrates the potential to speed up many microscopy-based experiments based on a small amount of user interaction. SignificanceSimSearch can help biologists quickly extract informative regions and perform analyses on large datasets helping increase the throughput in a microscopy experiment.

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bioRxiv2020

Rapid development of cloud-native intelligent data pipelines for scientific data streams using the HASTE Toolkit

This paper introduces the HASTE Toolkit, a cloud-native software toolkit capable of partitioning data streams in order to prioritize usage of limited resources. This in turn enables more efficient data-intensive experiments. We propose a model that introduces automated, autonomous decision making in data pipelines, such that a stream of data can be partitioned into a tiered or ordered data hierarchy. Importantly, the partitioning is online and based on data content rather than a priori metadata. At the core of the model are interestingness functions and policies. Interestingness functions assign a quantitative measure of interestingness to a single data object in the stream, an interestingness score. Based on this score, a policy guides decisions on how to prioritize computational resource usage for a given object. The HASTE Toolkit is a collection of tools to adapt data stream processing to this pipeline model. The result is smart data pipelines capable of effective or even optimal use of e.g. storage, compute and network bandwidth, to support experiments involving rapid processing of scientific data characterized by large individual data object sizes. We demonstrate the proposed model and our toolkit through two microscopy imaging case studies, each with their own interestingness functions, policies, and data hierarchies. The first deals with a high content screening experiment, where images are analyzed in an on-premise container cloud with the goal of prioritizing the images for storage and subsequent computation. The second considers edge processing of images for upload into the public cloud for a real-time control loop for a transmission electron microscope. Key PointsO_LIWe propose a pipeline model for building intelligent pipelines for streams, accounting for actual information content in data rather than a priori metadata, and present the HASTE Toolkit, a cloud-native software toolkit for supporting rapid development according to the proposed model. C_LIO_LIWe demonstrate how the HASTE Toolkit enables intelligent resource optimization in two image analysis case studies based on a) high-content imaging and b) transmission electron microscopy. C_LIO_LIWe highlight the challenges of storage, processing and transfer in streamed high volume, high velocity scientific data for both cloud and cloud-edge use cases. C_LI

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