CellVisioner: A Generalizable Cell Virtual Staining Toolbox based on Few-Shot Transfer Learning for Mechanobiological Analysis

Xiayu Xu; Zhanfeng Xiao; Fan Zhang; Changxiang Wang; Bo Wei; Yaohui Wang; Bo Cheng; Yuanbo Jia; Yuan Li; Bin Li; Hui Guo; Feng Xu

doi:10.34133/research.0285

CellVisioner: A Generalizable Cell Virtual Staining Toolbox based on Few-Shot Transfer Learning for Mechanobiological Analysis

Research (Wash D C). 2023 Dec 5:6:0285. doi: 10.34133/research.0285. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Xiayu Xu^{1

2}, Zhanfeng Xiao^{1

2}, Fan Zhang^{1

2}, Changxiang Wang^{1

2}, Bo Wei^{1

2}, Yaohui Wang^{1

2}, Bo Cheng^{1

2}, Yuanbo Jia^{1

2}, Yuan Li^{1

2}, Bin Li^{1

2}, Hui Guo³, Feng Xu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, P.R. China.
² Bioinspired Engineering and Biomechanics Center (BEBC), Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, P.R. China.
³ Department of Medical Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710061, P.R. China.

Abstract

Visualizing cellular structures especially the cytoskeleton and the nucleus is crucial for understanding mechanobiology, but traditional fluorescence staining has inherent limitations such as phototoxicity and photobleaching. Virtual staining techniques provide an alternative approach to addressing these issues but often require substantial amount of user training data. In this study, we develop a generalizable cell virtual staining toolbox (termed CellVisioner) based on few-shot transfer learning that requires substantially reduced user training data. CellVisioner can virtually stain F-actin and nuclei for various types of cells and extract single-cell parameters relevant to mechanobiology research. Taking the label-free single-cell images as input, CellVisioner can predict cell mechanobiological status (e.g., Yes-associated protein nuclear/cytoplasmic ratio) and perform long-term monitoring for living cells. We envision that CellVisioner would be a powerful tool to facilitate on-site mechanobiological research.