SynapCountJ: A Tool for Analyzing Synaptic Densities in Neurons

Gadea Mata, Jónathan Heras, Miguel Morales, Ana Romero, Julio Rubio

2016

Abstract

The quantification of synapses is instrumental to measure the evolution of synaptic densities of neurons under the effect of some physiological conditions, neuronal diseases or even drug treatments. However, the manual quantification of synapses is a tedious, error-prone, time-consuming and subjective task; therefore, tools that might automate this process are desirable. In this paper, we present SynapCountJ, an ImageJ plugin, that can measure synaptic density of individual neurons obtained by immunofluorescence techniques, and also can be applied for batch processing of neurons that have been obtained in the same experiment or using the same setting. The procedure to quantify synapses implemented in SynapCountJ is based on the colocalization of three images of the same neuron (the neuron marked with two antibody markers and the structure of the neuron) and is inspired by methods coming from Computational Algebraic Topology. SynapCountJ provides a procedure to semi-automatically quantify the number of synapses of neuron cultures; as a result, the time required for such an analysis is greatly reduced.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Mata G., Heras J., Morales M., Romero A. and Rubio J. (2016). SynapCountJ: A Tool for Analyzing Synaptic Densities in Neurons . In Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: BIOIMAGING, (BIOSTEC 2016) ISBN 978-989-758-170-0, pages 25-31. DOI: 10.5220/0005637700250031

in Bibtex Style

@conference{bioimaging16,
author={Gadea Mata and Jónathan Heras and Miguel Morales and Ana Romero and Julio Rubio},
title={SynapCountJ: A Tool for Analyzing Synaptic Densities in Neurons},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: BIOIMAGING, (BIOSTEC 2016)},
year={2016},
pages={25-31},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005637700250031},
isbn={978-989-758-170-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: BIOIMAGING, (BIOSTEC 2016)
TI - SynapCountJ: A Tool for Analyzing Synaptic Densities in Neurons
SN - 978-989-758-170-0
AU - Mata G.
AU - Heras J.
AU - Morales M.
AU - Romero A.
AU - Rubio J.
PY - 2016
SP - 25
EP - 31
DO - 10.5220/0005637700250031