After a hot bath, a worm either curls into a ring or stretches out like a wet thread. It's a simple sign: a live worm bends, a dead one lies straight. Scientists have taught a neural network to spot this difference in photographs. Now there's no need to wait weeks for the worms to age and manually count the survivors. The neural network does it in seconds.
How does it work? The worms are given a drug, then heated to 35 degrees for 11 hours. The survivors are photographed. The neural network locates each worm, outlines its silhouette, and assesses how bent it is. A curled posture means alive, a straight one means dead. The average probability per well gives an estimate of survival.
Out of 2782 drugs already approved for humans, 18 extended the worms' lifespan. 14 of them had not previously been linked to longevity. Three compounds also reduced the number of senescent cells in human cells. This means the method could help find drugs for people as well.
The copper blocks clamping the plate eliminate the "edge effect," the difference in heating between the outer and central wells. Without them, survival in the outer wells would be lower simply because of uneven heat.
Not published on arXiv. Here are its page, the PDF and the formalization: you can check it yourself, not only read our account.