Cancer multicellular aggregates: Volume reconstruction from a single 2D projection

Multicellular cancer spheroids are solid 3D tumours widely employed in pre-clinical studies for testing drugs, chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments. The volume is considered one of the most relevant features and its changes are typically correlated to the efficacy of the tested treatment. Thereby, the correct estimation of the volume is fundamental for the whole analysis. Nevertheless, very few methods have been proposed in the literature to accurately estimate the tumour’s volume arising from one 2D projection, such as that represented by an image acquired with a standard widefield microscope. In this work, we proposed a 3D rendering method to reconstruct the surface and estimate the volume of spheroids. In particular, to assess the effectiveness of our method, we proposed a new comparison approach based on the analysis of real-world, home-made 3D objects, mimicking the spheroid morphology. The experiments performed proved the effectiveness of our method for the volume assessment, meanwhile providing a 3D reconstruction of the spheroid’s shape.