Label‐free cell detection of acute leukemia using ghost cytometry

• Published in: Cytometry. Part A Vol. 105; no. 3; pp. 196 - 202
• Main Authors: Kawamura, Yoko, Nakanishi, Kayoko, Murata, Yuri, Teranishi, Kazuki, Miyazaki, Ryusuke, Toda, Keisuke, Imai, Toru, Kajiwara, Yasuhiro, Nakagawa, Keiji, Matsuo, Hidemasa, Adachi, Souichi, Ota, Sadao, Hiramatsu, Hidefumi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken, USA John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.03.2024; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Acute Disease; acute leukemia; Acute lymphoblastic leukemia; acute lymphocytic leukemia; Acute myeloid leukemia; Antibodies; Bone marrow; Bone Marrow Cells; Cytometry; Diagnostic systems; Flow cytometry; Flow Cytometry - methods; ghost cytometry; Humans; imaging flow cytometry; Immunophenotyping; Leukemia; Leukemia, Myeloid, Acute - diagnosis; Lymphatic leukemia; machine learning; Machine vision; Precursor Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma - diagnosis; support vector machine; support vector machine; acute myeloid leukemia; acute lymphocytic leukemia; acute leukemia; flow cytometry; imaging flow cytometry; machine learning; ghost cytometry
• ISSN: 1552-4922; 1552-4930; 1552-4930
• DOI: 10.1002/cyto.a.24821

Early diagnosis and prompt initiation of appropriate treatment are critical for improving the prognosis of acute leukemia. Acute leukemia is diagnosed by microscopic morphological examination of bone marrow smears and flow cytometric immunophenotyping of bone marrow cells stained with fluorophore‐conjugated antibodies. However, these diagnostic processes require trained professionals and are time and resource‐intensive. Here, we present a novel diagnostic approach using ghost cytometry, a recently developed high‐content flow cytometric approach, which enables machine vision‐based, stain‐free, high‐speed analysis of cells, leveraging their detailed morphological information. We demonstrate that ghost cytometry can detect leukemic cells from the bone marrow cells of patients diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia without relying on biological staining. The approach presented here holds promise as a precise, simple, swift, and cost‐effective diagnostic method for acute leukemia in clinical practice.