Estimation of Cell Cycle States of Human Melanoma Cells with Quantitative Phase Imaging and Deep Learning

Visualization and classification of cell cycle stages in live cells requires the introduction of transient or stably expressing fluorescent markers. This is not feasible for all cell types, and can be time consuming to implement. Labelling of living cells also has the potential to perturb normal cellular function. Here we describe a computational strategy to estimate core cell cycle stages without markers by taking advantage of features extracted from information-rich ptychographic time-lapse movies. We show that a deep-learning approach can estimate the cell cycle trajectories of individual human melanoma cells from short 3-frame (~23 minute) snapshots, and can identify cell cycle arrest induced by chemotherapeutic agents targeting melanoma driver mutations.