Digital staining in optical microscopy using deep learning -- a review
This is a review article that synthesizes existing research, making it incremental in nature.
The paper reviews digital staining in optical microscopy using deep learning, which tackles the problem of conventional biochemical staining's limitations like manual processing and time delays by translating label-free optical contrast into established stainings, with the result being a promising concept that leverages modern deep learning for improved biomedical applications.
Until recently, conventional biochemical staining had the undisputed status as well-established benchmark for most biomedical problems related to clinical diagnostics, fundamental research and biotechnology. Despite this role as gold-standard, staining protocols face several challenges, such as a need for extensive, manual processing of samples, substantial time delays, altered tissue homeostasis, limited choice of contrast agents for a given sample, 2D imaging instead of 3D tomography and many more. Label-free optical technologies, on the other hand, do not rely on exogenous and artificial markers, by exploiting intrinsic optical contrast mechanisms, where the specificity is typically less obvious to the human observer. Over the past few years, digital staining has emerged as a promising concept to use modern deep learning for the translation from optical contrast to established biochemical contrast of actual stainings. In this review article, we provide an in-depth analysis of the current state-of-the-art in this field, suggest methods of good practice, identify pitfalls and challenges and postulate promising advances towards potential future implementations and applications.