An automated assay for the evaluation of mortality in fish embryo

Abstract

Fish embryo models are used increasingly for human disease modeling, chemical toxicology screening, drug discovery and environmental toxicology studies. These studies are devoted to the analysis of a wide spectrum of physiological parameters, such as mortality ratio. In this article, we develop an assay to determine Medaka (Oryzias latipes) embryo mortality. Based on video sequences, our purpose is to obtain reliable, repeatable results in a fully automated fashion. To reach that challenging goal, we develop an efficient morphological pipeline that analyses image sequences in a multiscale paradigm, from the global scene to the embryo, and then to its heart, finally analysing its putative motion, characterized by intensity variations. Our pipeline, based on robust morphological operators, has a low computational cost, and was experimentally assessed on a dataset consisting of 660 images, providing a success ratio higher than 99%.