Research

Engineering Sciences

Swipe to view

Title :

4dSpAn: 4D analysis of dendritic spine plasticity from high resolution microscopic images

Area of research :

Engineering Sciences

Principal Investigator :

Prof. Subhadip Basu, Jadavpur University, West Bengal

Timeline Start Year :

2023

Timeline End Year :

2026

Contact info :

Equipments :

Details

Swipe to view

Executive Summary :

Advanced microscopic imaging has enabled the visualization of activity- and experience-dependent morphological changes of dendritic spines, which are believed to play a crucial role in learning and memory and are symptomatic in diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Morphological analysis of dendritic spine's plasticity could help explore the relationship between structural changes and their biological consequences. Traditionally, dendritic spines were detected manually and measured by human experts. Several methods for automatic/semi-automatic spine detection, segmentation, and analysis have been proposed to reduce human intervention while retaining accuracy. However, automatic/semi-automatic segmentation of dendritic spines from dendrite is a difficult problem in 3D, and existing methods often require exhaustive user interaction to achieve high accuracy. The proposed project aims to develop a new spine registration method for semi-automatic tracking of spines in time-varying 3D images. There is a global scientific need to develop robust tools for efficient prepossessing, segmentation, and plasticity analysis of dendritic spines in 3D time-series images. The project consists of five modules: 1) Filtering out noises from 3D microscopic images using advanced noise filtering algorithms and deep learning models; 2) Registering and tracking individual dendritic spines over time using efficient methods for 3D image registration over multiple time stamps; 3) Accurate segmentation of dendritic spines through multiple timestamps; 4) Morphological feature extraction, spine compartmentalization, plasticity analysis of individual spines, and spine classification; and 5) Interactive tool development for preprocessing, segmentation, and analysis of dendritic spines from high resolution microscopic images of ex vivo/in vitro/in vivo samples.

Total Budget (INR):

22,38,580

Organizations involved