Deep-learning-based automated prediction of mouse seminiferous tubule stage by using bright-field microscopy
摘要
Infertility is a global issue, and approximately 50% of cases are due to male factors, with defective spermatogenesis being the main one. For studies of spermatogenesis, evaluating the seminiferous tubule stage is essential. However, current evaluation methods involve labor-intensive manual tasks with a lack of reproducibility owing to the subjective nature of visual evaluation by experts. Here, we propose a deep-learning-based method for automatically and objectively evaluating the seminiferous tubule stage. Our approach predicts which of 12 seminiferous tubule stages is represented in bright-field microscopic images of mouse seminiferous tubules stained by hematoxylin-PAS. The maximum prediction accuracy of our approach was 79.58% which rose to 98.33% with allowance for a prediction error of