AccScience Publishing / IJB / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/ijb.4035
REVIEW
Early Access

Deep learning for polymer scaffold bioimage analysis: Opportunities and challenges                                        

Jie Sun1,2* Kai Yao1 Hui Zhu3 Kaizhu Huang4* Dejian Huang5
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1 School of Advanced Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China
2 State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
3 School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
4 Data Science Research Centre, Duke Kunshan University, Kunshan, China
5 Department of Food Science and Technology, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Submitted: 24 June 2024 | Accepted: 18 December 2024 | Published: 18 December 2024
© 2024 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Significant efforts have been made to advance bioprinted scaffold research in cell biology, tissue engineering, and drug screening studies. Ideal scaffolds should demonstrate suitable mechanical properties, excellent biocompatibility, and bioactivities. However, the design and preparation of such scaffolds are challenging. Imaging modalities including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), micro-computed tomography (Micro-CT), ultrasound imaging (UI), optical coherence tomography (OCT), and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) are commonly used to visualize the interior architecture of bioprinted scaffolds as well as the surrounding cells and tissues. The obtained bioimages provide the first-hand information of scaffold biological functionalities, while the interpretation of such images can readily give rise to divergent viewpoints and even arguments. This study is to review and explore deep learning (DL) methods in those image analysis through restoration, segmentation, and classification. Firstly, the current DL methods for biological image processing are summarized, such as convolutional neural network, U-Net and generative adversarial network. The corresponding outcomes of these methods can reveal the cell-scaffold and tissue-scaffold interactions and guide scaffold design in each specific task. Last but not least, the challenges and limitations of DL applications in this area are highlighted, such as building DL models using smaller bioimage datasets, interpreting DL models, vision-language model guided bioimage analysis, and developing intelligent analysis platforms. These studies would mark a paradigm shift in polymer scaffold designs and the associated performance.

Keywords
Bioimage analysis
Deep learning
Machine learning
Imaging modalities
Polymer scaffold
Funding
This work was financially supported by the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University's Grant REF-21-02-001.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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International Journal of Bioprinting, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8002 Print ISSN: 2424-7723, Published by AccScience Publishing