Other Works » Computational Microscopy Imaging Laboratory » College of Medicine

Three panels showing images of neutrophils undergoing extracellular trap formation. The first two images show the progression of trap release, appearing as bright, web-like structures extending from the cell. The third image overlays a green ellipse and blue/red lines onto the extracellular trap, potentially for measurement or analysis of its dimensions.

Image Analytics of Neutrophil Extracellular Traps

We developed computational pipelines to automatically detect, segment, and quantify human and mouse neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) from flow cytometry and confocal microscopy images. NETs are extracellular defense mechanisms used by neutrophils, where chromatin is expelled together with histones and granular/cytoplasmic proteins, and have become an immunology hotspot, implicated in infections, but also in a diverse array of diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, diabetes, and cancer. Our approach will be useful in infectious and inflammatory diseases.

Microscopic image of a biological sample with a green outlined region. The sample is mostly purple with speckled dark areas. The green outline highlights an irregularly shaped area within the sample, appearing roughly 'L' shaped.

Blood Smear Image Analytics

We have developed a fully automated pipeline targeted for erythrocyte detection and quantification from blood smear whole slide images (WSIs). Our pipeline has implication in the diagnosis of hematological disorders like sickle cell anemia.