SynapcountJ: A validated tool for analyzing synaptic densities in neurons

  1. Mata, G. 1
  2. Cuesto, G. 3
  3. Heras, J.O. 1
  4. Morales, M. 2
  5. Romero, A. 1
  6. Rubio, J. 1
  1. 1 Universidad de La Rioja
    info

    Universidad de La Rioja

    Logroño, España

    ROR https://ror.org/0553yr311

  2. 2 Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
    info

    Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

    Barcelona, España

    ROR https://ror.org/052g8jq94

  3. 3 Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Centro de Investigaciones Biomédicas de Canarias (CIBICAN), Instituto de Tecnologías Biomédicas (ITB), San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain
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Revista:
Communications in Computer and Information Science

ISSN: 1865-0929

Año de publicación: 2017

Volumen: 690

Páginas: 41-55

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-54717-6_3 SCOPUS: 2-s2.0-85014895774 GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Otras publicaciones en: Communications in Computer and Information Science

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Resumen

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, reliable tools that might automate this process are desirable. In this paper, we present Synap- CountJ, 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. The computations performed by SynapCountJ have been validated by comparing the results with those of a formally verified algorithm (implemented in a different system). © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.