Image segmentation

SliceMap

Whole brain tissue slices are commonly used in neurobiological research for analyzing pathological features in an anatomically defined manner. However, since many pathologies are expressed in specific regions of the brain, it is necessary to have an annotation of the regions in the brain slices. Such an annotation can be done by manual delineation, as done most often, or by an automated region annotation tool.

SliceMap is a FIJI/ImageJ plugin for automated brain region annotation of fluorescent brain slices. The plugin uses a reference library of pre-annotated brain slices (the brain region templates) to annotate brain regions of unknown samples. To perform the region annotation, SliceMap registers the reference slices to the sample slice (using elastic registration plugin BUnwarpJ) and uses the resulting image transformations to morph the template regions towards the anatomical brain regions of the sample. The resulting brain regions are saved as FIJI/ImageJ ROI’s (Regions Of Interest) as a single zip-file for each sample slice.

More information can also be found in "SliceMap: an algorithm for automated brain region annotation", Michaël Barbier, Astrid Bottelbergs, Rony Nuydens, Andreas Ebneth, Winnok H De Vos, Bioinformatics, btx658, https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btx658

SuRVoS: Super-Region Volume Segmentation workbench

A volume is first partitioned into Super-Regions (superpixels or supervoxels) and then interactively segmented by the user providing training annotations. SuRVoS can then learn from and extend the annotations to the whole volume.

This project was designed for vectorize and analyze the  blood vessels in the mouse brain.

This plugin requires the definition of seed point detection settings by the user (Semi-automated).

We have developed a novel approach, named DF-Tracing, to tackle this challenge. This method first extracts the neurite signal (foreground) from a noisy image by using anisotropic filtering and automated thresholding. Then, DF-Tracing executes a coupled distance-field (DF) algorithm on the extracted foreground neurite signal and reconstructs the neuron morphology automatically. Two distance-transform based “force” fields are used: one for “pressure”, which is the distance transform field of foreground pixels (voxels) to the background, and another for “thrust”, which is the distance transform field of the foreground pixels to an automatically determined seed point. The coupling of these two force fields can“push” a “rolling ball” quickly along the skeleton of a neuron, reconstructing the 3D cell morphology.