Application of an artificial intelligence for quantitative analysis of endothelial capillary beds in vitro

The use of endothelial cell cultures has become fundamental to study angiogenesis. Recent advances in artificial intelligences (AI) offer opportunities to develop automated assessment methods in medical research, analyzing larger datasets.

The aim of this study was to compare the application of AI with a manual method to morphometrically quantify in vitro angiogenesis.

Co-cultures of human microvascular endothelial cells and fibroblasts were incubated mimicking endothelial capillary-beds. An AI-software was trained for segmentation of endothelial capillaries on anti-CD31-labeled light microscope crops. Number of capillaries and branches and average capillary diameter were measured by the AI and manually on 115 crops.

The crops were analyzed faster by the AI than manually (3 minutes vs 1 hour per crop). Using the AI, systematically more capillaries (mean 48/mm2 vs 27/mm2) and branches (mean 23/mm2 vs 11/mm2) were counted than manually. Both methods had a strong linear relationship in counting capillaries and branches (r-capillaries = 0.88, r-branches = 0.89). No correlation was found for measurements of the diameter (r-diameter = 0.15).

The present AI reduces the time required for quantitative analysis of angiogenesis on large datasets, and correlates well with manual analysis.