Abstract
Cyclic fluorescence microscopy enables multiple targets to be detected simultaneously. This, in turn, has deepened our understanding of tissue composition, cell-to-cell interactions, and cell signaling. Unfortunately, analysis of these datasets can be time-prohibitive due to the sheer volume of data. In this paper, we present CycloNET, a computational pipeline tailored for analyzing raw fluorescent images obtained through cyclic immunofluorescence. The automated pipeline pre-processes raw image files, quickly corrects for translation errors between imaging cycles, and leverages a pre-trained neural network to segment individual cells and generate single-cell molecular profiles. We applied CycloNET to a dataset of 22 human samples from head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients and trained a neural network to segment immune cells. CycloNET efficiently processed a large-scale dataset (17 fields of view per cycle and 13 staining cycles per specimen) in 10 min, delivering insights at the single-cell resolution and facilitating the identification of rare immune cell clusters. We expect that this rapid pipeline will serve as a powerful tool to understand complex biological systems at the cellular level, with the potential to facilitate breakthroughs in areas such as developmental biology, disease pathology, and personalized medicine.