Machine learning approaches to reveal pinealocyte changes in ageing and Alzheimer's disease.
Authors
Affiliations (7)
Affiliations (7)
- Institute of Nanotechnology - CNR, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, Rome, Italy.
- Institute of Nanotechnology - CNR, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, Rome, Italy. Electronic address: [email protected].
- Institute of Nanotechnology - CNR, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, Rome, Italy; Santa Lucia Foundation, Via Ardeatina 302, Rome, Italy.
- Institute of Nanotechnology - CNR, c/o Campus Ecotekne, via Monteroni, Lecce, Italy; University of Salento, Piazza Tancredi 7, Lecce, Italy; Tecnomed Puglia - Tecnopolo per la medicina di precisione (Biotech Lecce Hub) c/o Campus Ecotekne, via Monteroni, Lecce, 73100, Italy.
- ESRF, The European Synchrotron, 71 Avenue des Martyrs, CS40220, Cedex 9, 38043, Grenoble, France.
- Avtsyn Research Institute of Human Morphology of FSBSI "Petrovsky National Research Centre of Surgery", Tsyurupy st. 3, 1 Moscow, Russia.
- Institute of Nanotechnology - CNR, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, Rome, Italy; Tecnomed Puglia - Tecnopolo per la medicina di precisione (Biotech Lecce Hub) c/o Campus Ecotekne, via Monteroni, Lecce, 73100, Italy.
Abstract
This study investigates age-related changes in human pinealocytes and their association with Alzheimer's disease (AD). We analyzed calcified deposits in the pineal gland (PG) using a novel approach combining X-ray nano-holotomography and convolutional neural network-based image processing. Our approach used a U-net architecture for PG morphological feature segmentation, with particular emphasis on micro-calcifications in the pinealocyte cytoplasm, identified as primary calcification sites. The ratio of cytoplasmic deposits to number of pinealocytes in tissue volume showed a weak negative age-related tendency, but was not associated with AD. Our results show that pineal calcification may serve as a biomarker for synthetic activity, which declines with age. In addition, pathology-specific factors associated with AD may modulate pineal calcification patterns, potentially confounding age-related trends. Our findings contribute to a broader understanding of age-related neuropathology by providing insight into pineal alterations at the cellular level.