Cell membrane proteins play an important role in tissue architecture and cell-cell communication. We hypothesize that segmentation and multidimensional characterization of the distribution of cell membrane proteins, on a cell-by-cell basis, enable improved classification of treatment groups and identify important characteristics that can otherwise be hidden. We have developed a series of computational steps to (i) delineate cell membrane protein signals and associate them with a specific nucleus; (ii) compute a coupled representation of the multiplexed DNA content with membrane proteins; (iii) rank computed features associated with such a multidimensional representation; (iv) visualize selected features for comparative evaluation through heatmaps; and (v) discriminate between treatment groups in an optimal fashion. The novelty of our method is in the segmentation of the membrane signal and the multidimensional representation of phenotypic signature on a cell-by-cell basis. To test the ...
Ju Han, Hang Chang, Kumari L. Andarawewa, Paul Yas