Analysis pipeline to quantify uterine gland structural variations

Area of Science:

• Reproductive biology
• Biomedical imaging
• Computational anatomy

Background:

• Advances in whole tissue imaging and clearing enable 3D reconstruction of deep uterine glands.
• Limited platforms exist for analyzing these complex 3D gland datasets.
• A novel pipeline is presented for segmenting and analyzing uterine gland morphology.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a computational pipeline for quantitative analysis of 3D uterine gland structure.
• To investigate dynamic changes in uterine gland morphology during peri-implantation in a mouse model.
• To assess the cross-species applicability of the analysis pipeline to human and guinea pig uterine glands.

Main Methods:

• A computational pipeline was developed for segmenting 3D uterine gland images.
• Metrics for gland length, shape, and branching were derived.
• The pipeline was applied to mouse, human, and guinea pig uterine glands at peri-implantation stages.

Main Results:

• The analysis pipeline successfully segmented uterine glands and extracted morphological features.
• Uterine glands exhibited significant changes in length, tortuosity, and proximity to the lumen during embryo/egg entry.
• Gland reorganization around the embryo implantation site was observed, with branch number remaining constant.
• The pipeline demonstrated feasibility across different mammalian species.

Conclusions:

• This image analysis pipeline provides a resource for quantitative and reproducible morphological feature extraction from 3D uterine gland images.
• The findings offer insights into the functional and structural adaptations of uterine glands during early pregnancy.
• The developed methodology supports comparative studies of uterine gland biology across species.