Cellular cartography of the organ of Corti based on optical tissue clearing and machine learning.

ABSTRACT: The highly organized spatial arrangement of sensory hair cells in the organ of Corti is essential for inner ear function. Here, we report a new analytical pipeline, based on optical clearing of tissue, for the construction of a single-cell resolution map of the organ of Corti. A sorbitol-based optical clearing method enabled imaging of the entire cochlea at subcellular resolution. High-fidelity detection and analysis of all hair cell positions along the entire longitudinal axis of the organ of Corti were performed automatically by machine learning-based pattern recognition. Application of this method to samples from young, adult, and noise-exposed mice extracted essential information regarding cellular pathology, including longitudinal and radial spatial characteristics of cell loss, imply

SUBMITTER: Urata S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6338463 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature