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Virtual biomarkers: predicting immune status using label-free holotomography of individual human monocytes and machine learning analysis

Lee, M.; Kim, G.; Lee, M. S.; Shin, J. W.; Lee, J. H.; Ryu, D. H.; Kim, Y. S.; Chung, Y.; Kim, K. S.; Park, Y.

2023-09-14 immunology
10.1101/2023.09.12.557503 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Precise evaluation of immune status is critical for managing diseases such as sepsis, in which the immune system transitions between hyper-inflammatory and immune-suppressed states. However, current biomarkers are limited by low specificity and time-consuming protocols. Here, we present a label-free, imaging-based framework for single-cell immune profiling of human monocytes using three-dimensional holotomography (HT) and deep learning. HT captures subcellular refractive index (RI) distributions of live, unlabeled cells, enabling quantitative extraction of morphological and biophysical features. Using an in vitro LPS-based model, we classified three functional immune states--control, hyper-inflammation, and immune suppression--based on 4,059 holotomograms from 11 donors. Immune state transitions were associated with significant changes in cell volume, surface area, RI variability, and the abundance of lipid droplets. A 3D convolutional neural network trained on HT images achieved 83.7% accuracy for single-cell predictions, increasing to 99.9% with ensemble averaging. This study establishes HT as a scalable, label-free platform for real-time immune monitoring and introduces subcellular RI features as robust correlates of immune dysregulation.

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