Conventional G-banded karyotyping remains indispensable in prenatal diagnosis but continues to rely on labor-intensive, expertise-dependent visual examination. To address these challenges, we developed a modular artificial intelligence (AI) workflow that automates chromosome interpretation from amniotic fluid metaphase images. The system integrates image denoising, chromosome segmentation, overlap screening, and morphology-based classification, and was trained using 13,223 clinical cases comprising more than 50,000 manually annotated chromosomes. Across training, temporal validation, and independent testing cohorts, classification accuracy remained consistently high (97.45%, 96.95%, and 95.72%, respectively). The overlap-recognition module further reduced downstream errors by reliably identifying composite chromosome regions. When applied to unsorted metaphase images from a later clinical cohort, the workflow successfully generated draft karyotypes without manual sorting and maintained close concordance with expert review. These findings demonstrate that an AI-assisted pipeline can support cytogenetic laboratories by streamlining the most labor-intensive steps of karyotyping, potentially enhancing diagnostic efficiency while preserving interpretive reliability.
Wu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.