Imaging and spatial analysis of hematopoietic stem cell niches

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) have been long proposed to reside in defined anatomical locations within bone marrow (BM) tissues in direct contact or close proximity to nurturing cell types. Imaging techniques that allow the simultaneous mapping of HSCs and interacting cell types have been central to the discovery of basic principles of these so‐called HSC niches. Despite major progress in the field, a quantitative and comprehensive model of the cellular and molecular components that define these specialized microenvironments is lacking to date, and uncertainties remain on the preferential localization of HSCs in the context of complex BM tissue landscapes. Recent technological breakthroughs currently allow for the quantitative spatial analysis of BM cellular components with extraordinary precision. Here, we critically discuss essential technical aspects related to imaging approaches, image processing tools, and spatial statistics, which constitute the three basic elements of rigorous quantitative spatial analyses of HSC niches in the BM microenvironment.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

• Publication date

  2020-04-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/nyas.14184PMID 31368140
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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