Neural network reveals platelet age from fluorescence microscopy images

Abstract

Platelets are small, anucleate cells with a primary physiological role in vascular damage repair (hemostasis) and initiation of thrombus formation in response to vascular injury. Platelets circulate approximately 7–10 days, slowly undergoing age-related changes in molecular composition, morphology, activation capacity, function, and surface receptor density. As older platelets are associated with poor clinical outcome, no in vitro tests are available to predict platelet age, or to determine the fitness of platelet transfusion products. In this study, we developed a convolutional neural network model that could determine platelets’ chronological age from confocal microscopic images. The model was trained using platelets stored in platelet-rich plasma up to 8 hours and using routine platelet concentrates up to 10 days. The model predicted chronological age of stored platelets with >97% accuracy. To test our model in vivo, we analyzed a cohort of patients with acute myeloid leukemia, experiencing thrombocytopenia due to chemotherapy. Our model could reliably distinguish in vivo between samples with younger and older platelets during the course of treatment. This study demonstrates the ability to predict platelets’ chronological age both in vitro during storage and in vivo, which may impact clinical transfusion medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of patients with platelet disorders.