Application of medical imaging methods and artificial intelligence in tissue engineering and organ-on-a-chip

Organ-on-a-chip (OOC) is a new type of biochip technology. Various types of OOC systems have been developed rapidly in the past decade and found important applications in drug screening and precision medicine. However, due to the complexity in the structure of both the chip-body itself and the engineered-tissue inside, the imaging and analysis of OOC have still been a big challenge for biomedical researchers. Considering that medical imaging is moving towards higher spatial and temporal resolution and has more applications in tissue engineering, this paper aims to review medical imaging methods, including CT, micro-CT, MRI, small animal MRI, and OCT, and introduces the application of 3D printing in tissue engineering and OOC in which medical imaging plays an important role. The achievements of medical imaging assisted tissue engineering are reviewed, and the potential applications of medical imaging in organoids and OOC are discussed. Moreover, artificial intelligence - especially deep learning - has demonstrated its excellence in the analysis of medical imaging; we will also present the application of artificial intelligence in the image analysis of 3D tissues, especially for organoids developed in novel OOC systems.