Virtual birefringence imaging and histological staining of amyloid deposits in label-free tissue using autofluorescence microscopy and deep learning.

Journal: Nature communications
PMID: 39266547

Abstract

Systemic amyloidosis involves the deposition of misfolded proteins in organs/tissues, leading to progressive organ dysfunction and failure. Congo red is the gold-standard chemical stain for visualizing amyloid deposits in tissue, showing birefringence under polarization microscopy. However, Congo red staining is tedious and costly to perform, and prone to false diagnoses due to variations in amyloid amount, staining quality and manual examination of tissue under a polarization microscope. We report virtual birefringence imaging and virtual Congo red staining of label-free human tissue to show that a single neural network can transform autofluorescence images of label-free tissue into brightfield and polarized microscopy images, matching their histochemically stained versions. Blind testing with quantitative metrics and pathologist evaluations on cardiac tissue showed that our virtually stained polarization and brightfield images highlight amyloid patterns in a consistent manner, mitigating challenges due to variations in chemical staining quality and manual imaging processes in the clinical workflow.

Authors

  • Xilin Yang
  • Bijie Bai
    Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
  • Yijie Zhang
    Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, China; School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China; Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China; Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China. Electronic address: fanfandez@163.com.
  • Musa Aydin
  • Yuzhu Li
    Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
  • Sahan Yoruc Selcuk
    Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
  • Paloma Casteleiro Costa
    Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
  • Zhen Guo
    School of Civil and Hydraulic Engineering, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, China.
  • Gregory A Fishbein
    Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
  • Karine Atlan
    Department of Pathology, Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, 91120, Israel.
  • William Dean Wallace
    Department of Pathology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA.
  • Nir Pillar
    Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
  • Aydogan Ozcan
    Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.

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