Sketch the Organoids from Birth to Death – Development of an Intelligent OrgaTracker System for Multi-Dimensional Organoid Analysis and Recreation

Organoids are three-dimensional in vitro models that recreate the structure and physiology of their source organs or tissues in remarkable detail. Due to the diversity of organoids in shape and size and the three-dimensional growth environment, it is challenging to observe and analyze organoids periodically in the microscope to obtain their morphological or growth characteristics, especially in high-throughput experiments. Here, this paper first proposes OrgaTracker, a novel assembled architecture combining Yolov5 for object detection and U-net for semantic segmentation. The deep learning algorithm can track and segment organoids over time and effectively avoid the influence of bubbles and accurately capture and analyze organoid fusion. A two-stage object detection methodology was performed to achieve the crypt count of each mouse small intestinal organoid, and the skeleton of intestinal organoids was further extracted to describe the structural relationship between the absorption villi and the crypt. Next, we used the “sketch” to convey visual concepts, which led to the clear identification of organoids at different growth/treatment stages. Lastly, based on our designed GAN network, various organoid images could be generated by drawing sketches, which for the first time provided a direct and practical approach for biologists and researchers to create “artificial organoids” simulating organoid morphology and allowing the exchange of ideas on organoid development. In sum, this research reported and provided a comprehensive novel organoid analysis and generation methodology for organoid research. Highlights OrgaTracker can track organoids and capture and analyze the integration of organoids. The system was also able to identify the number of crypts in each intestinal organoid, as well as extract the skeleton of the organoid. It also allowed, for the first time, recreating “artificial organoids” from hand-drawn sketches.