Analysis of Mouse RPE Sheet Morphology Gives Discriminatory Categories

Abstract

We are interested in developing quantitative tools to study RPE morphology. We want to detect changes in the RPE by strain, disease, genotype, and age. Ultimately these tools should be useful in predicting retinal disease progression. The morphometric data will also help us to understand RPE sheet formation and barrier functions. A clear disruption of the regular cell size and shape appeared in mouse mutants. Aspect ratio and cell area together gave rise to principal components that predicted age and genotype accurately and well before visually obvious damage could be seen.

Deep learning predicts function of live retinal pigment epithelium from quantitative microscopy

“…Thus, the trained DNN-S was used to segment QBAM images of living iPSC-RPE (healthy-1 and healthy-2 donors) treated with aphidicolin, HPI-4, or nothing (control). Previously published cell image features (22)(23)(24) and intensity metrics (20) known to correlate to RPE maturation and health were then assessed for significance. Figure 4C shows the average number of neighbors (22, 23) each iPSC-RPE cell had as a function of drug treatment and shows that HPI4 had a significantly lower (P < 0.001) mean number of neighbors across all time points.…”

Retinal Degenerative Diseases

“…The RPE was flatmounted, stained with AF635-phalloidin, and then imaged using confocal microscopy (Chrenek et al 2012;Jiang et al 2013;Jiang et al 2014). Images (typically 200-400 images, each image with hundreds of cells) were photomerged using Autopano Pro v2.5 (Kolor, Montmélian, France).…”

“…As RPE cells age, toxic metabolites continue to accumulate, causing the RPE cells to die (Liang and Godley 2003). With extensive RPE cell death, the epithelial sheet loses its overall stability (Chrenek et al 2012;Jiang et al 2013;Jiang et al 2014), which leads to RPE dysfunction and impaired functioning and damage to the retina, such as that seen in AMD. Epithelial sheets are in general resilient and resistant to damage (Roider et al 1992), and they maintain barrier function by tiling across the sheet .…”

RPE Cell and Sheet Properties in Normal and Diseased Eyes

“…The RPE was flatmounted, stained with AF635-phalloidin, and then imaged using confocal microscopy (Chrenek et al 2012; Jiang et al 2013; Jiang et al 2014). Images (typically 200 to 400 images, each image with hundreds of cells) were photomerged using Autopano Pro v2.5 (Kolor, Montmélian, France).…”

“…As RPE cells age, toxic metabolites continue to accumulate, causing the RPE cells to die (Liang and Godley 2003). With extensive RPE cell death, the epithelial sheet loses its overall stability (Chrenek et al 2012; Jiang et al 2013; Jiang et al 2014), which leads to RPE dysfunction and impaired functioning and damage to the retina, such as that seen in AMD. Epithelial sheets are in general resilient and resistant to damage (Roider et al 1992), and they maintain barrier function by tiling across the sheet (Jiang et al 2013).…”