Human embryonic stem cells (hESC) have great potential for cellular therapy because they are pluripotent. Analytical reliable methodologies for the non-destructive non-invasive quality evaluation and assurance for hESC production would be of great benefit to cellular therapy, drug screening and other uses of hESC. We have found that hESC colony texture and border characteristics provide useful features for determining the colony's level of pluripotency (Mangoubi et al., submitted to IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng.). Cellular characteristics of pluripotent hESC include nuclear hyperdynamics and lack of chromatin condensation. We propose to develop image based texture and border analysis analytical algorithms that would measure 1) the kinetics of whole hESC colony texture and borders and 2) the kinetics of cell nuclei texture. The methodology is to be used as a quality assurance tool for hESC production by measuring the kinetics of single cell nuclei, chromatin dynamics and heterochromatin formation as pluripotent cells differentiate into neuronal lineages. Our objective is to apply and continue to develop our new signal and image processing methodologies for application to hESC biology. These image processing based methods will be specifically used to 1) evaluate the pluripotency of multicell colonies and single cell nuclei, 2) predict the time history of colony fate, and 3) predict the dynamics of cell production. Development of the stem cell non-destructive evaluation methodology would require beyond state of the art analytical algorithms in the following areas: Parametric and non-Parametric classification, efficient variational segmentation and curve evolution methods, innovative border crispness and diffusivity analysis, non-Gaussian subspace learning and detection methods, and multi-resolution hierarchical dynamic models. Our objective is to develop these analytical tools for quantitative measurement of amorphous cellular and subcellular structures, though these innovations will benefit areas of medical imaging ranging from fMRI to tissue engineering.
Our aims i nclude: 1) The development of mathematical image processing methods for quantitatively distinguishing the texture and border of pluripotent from differentiated individual stem cells and colonies, 2) the extension of these methods to kinetic images for measuring dynamic changes in stem cell textures and borders, and 3) the development of spatio-temporal dynamic and control models that predict and help maintain the quality of hESC. ? ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
3R01EB006161-02S1
Application #
7659172
Study Section
Microscopic Imaging Study Section (MI)
Program Officer
Cohen, Zohara
Project Start
2007-06-15
Project End
2011-05-31
Budget Start
2008-07-16
Budget End
2009-05-31
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2008
Total Cost
$151,910
Indirect Cost
Name
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
Department
Type
DUNS #
066587478
City
Cambridge
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02139
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Fazelat, Ahad; Desai, Mukund; Nandakumar, Namrata et al. (2012) Enhanced, near-infrared fundus reflectance for qualitative and quantitative analysis of subretinal lesions. Exp Eye Res 96:171-7
Erb, Teresa M; Schneider, Corinne; Mucko, Sara E et al. (2011) Paracrine and epigenetic control of trophectoderm differentiation from human embryonic stem cells: the role of bone morphogenic protein 4 and histone deacetylases. Stem Cells Dev 20:1601-14
Copeland, Andrew D; Mangoubi, Rami S; Desai, Mukund N et al. (2010) Spatio-temporal data fusion for 3D+T image reconstruction in cerebral angiography. IEEE Trans Med Imaging 29:1238-51
Zhang, Ling; Stauffer, William R; Jane, Esther P et al. (2010) Enhanced differentiation of embryonic and neural stem cells to neuronal fates on laminin peptides doped polypyrrole. Macromol Biosci 10:1456-64