Structural Phenotyping of Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes

• Image processing metrics for characterizing the contractile cytoskeleton
• Unbiased data mining strategies to assess cardiomyocyte maturation
• Structural phenotyping of stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes

SummaryStructural phenotyping based on classical image feature detection has been adopted to elucidate the molecular mechanisms behind genetically or pharmacologically induced changes in cell morphology. Here, we developed a set of 11 metrics to capture the increasing sarcomere organization that occurs intracellularly during striated muscle cell development. To test our metrics, we analyzed the localization of the contractile protein α-actinin in a variety of primary and stem-cell derived cardiomyocytes. Further, we combined these metrics with data mining algorithms to unbiasedly score the phenotypic maturity of human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes.