MICCAI 2021 Daily – Thursday

Cell morphology , which is the study of the shape, structure, form, and size of cells, is the backbone of cell research being performed in laboratories around the world, typically utilizing traditional microscopes and other devices to view the cells of a given sample. Deepcell , which spun out of Stanford University in 2017, is bringing innovation that could reshape the way we think about cells , with a novel imaging and sorting platform powered by microfluidics and supported by machine learning. It has developed a way to automatically analyze and understand cells based on how they look and created hardware that not just analyses these cells but also acts on them. It is developing a highly advanced camera with an artificial brain that can identify, annotate, sort, enrich, and preserve single cells. The way this works is that a sample from a cancer patient, for example, is fed into the device, then images are taken which are fed into a machine learning brain, and these images are classified in real time to identify which cells are cancerous and which are not . After that, it isolates those cancer cells and applies deep sophisticated visual analysis. Based on that analysis, one could access viable cells to perform a range of interesting biological experiments. “ This is something that’s never been possible before Deepcell technology, ” Mahyar tells us. “ Imagine you are trying to figure out which drug is effective for your patient. Today, people try out different drugs, which may or may not work, and have to deal with all the related side effects and consequences that entails. I don’t think that should have a place in 21 st century medicine. Imagine instead, you have a sample from your patient, and you try different drugs on the actual cells. You could isolate different reactions and morphologies to make a connection between how the cells look and how effective the drug is on a patient before they take it. ” 22 DAILY MICCAI Thursday Startup Village Deepcell is a life science company offering technology at the intersection of microfluidics, genomics, and AI machine learning. It has a space in the Startup Village of MICCAI 2021 and has been selected as one of 10 start-ups that will get a chance to present its offering to participants. Co-founder and CTO Mahyar Salek tells us more about it.