Image processing tools for the study of brain connections
DIPC Seminars
- Speaker
-
Ignacio Arganda-Carreras (Ikerbasque Fellow, UPV/EHU)
- When
-
2015/10/29
13:00 - Place
- Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC). Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal, 4, Donostia
- Add to calendar
- iCal
Abstract
The quest for connectomes, that is, complete wiring diagrams of neural
circuits, requires implementing novel approaches for imaging and analyzing
large brain volumes at sub-cellular and even synapse-level resolution. This
ongoing revolution triggered a renaissance in light (LM) and electron
microscopy (EM), and now requires to identify every single synapse, axon and
dendrite, in order to extract connectomes. The task, while not simple, has
attracted a lot of attention for its promise to deliver insight into the
design principles of the brain. Unfortunately, the problems of acquiring the
image data have so far been easier to solve than that of interpreting it.
Increasingly, neuroscience laboratories require automated tools for managing
these vast EM and LM data sets using affordable consumer desktop computers.
Here we introduced image processing tools to process the massive amount of
image data (tera-byte scale) that modern microscopes produce nowadays for the
study of brain connectomics in affordable personal desktop computers. These
tools are part of a workflow that integrates all the software pieces for
volumetric reconstruction, visualization and analysis of objects from 2D/3D
sections in a very coherent and flexible way.