In human mesenchymal stem cells the envelope surrounding the nucleus, as visualized by the nuclear lamina, has a round and flat shape. The lamina structure is considerably deformed after activation of cell death (apoptosis). The spatial organization of the lamina is the initial structural change found after activation of the apoptotic pathway, therefore can be used as a marker to identify cells activated for apoptosis. Here we investigated whether the spatial changes in lamina spatial organization can be recognized by machine learning algorithms to classify normal and apoptotic cells. Classical machine learning algorithms were applied to classification of 3D image sections of nuclear lamina proteins, taken from healthy and apoptotic cells. We show that the Evolutionaryoptimized Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm succeeded in the classification of healthy and apoptotic cells in a highly satisfying result. This is the first time that cells are classified based on lamina spatial organ...
Ofer M. Shir, Vered Raz, Roeland W. Dirks, Thomas