OIST Mini Symposium "Digital representation of neuronal morphologies and tissue"

Summary
Recent advances in visualization technologies allow us to investigate neuronal morphologies at a level unthinkable a decade ago. With lightmicroscopy and modern day viruses, different markers can be visualized simultaneously and growth can be traced. Electron microscopy meticulously outlines neuronal structures up to the spine level (as well as intracellular level). If large enough regions are visualized, all connections between every neuron can be traced. How can we exploit this wealth of new information? With time, higher and higher resolution visualization of ever expanding regions is going to cause a deluge and a bottleneck: how will we process all this data into meaningful insights?

In this age of sharing and reproducibility, a first and pivotal issue is that of digitally representing neuronal morphologies. The current standard, the SWC format, is nearly two decades old and has many limitations: neuronal morphologies are abstracted to cylinder and cones. In other words, the format cannot faithfully represent morphologies. Neither can it represent multiple channels of data or developmental changes in morphology. At this dedicated mini-symposium, we aim to formulate the requirements for a next, future proof standard to digitally represent neuronal morphologies. Such a unified format would allow exchange of data and re-use of analysis tools between different laboratories. At this mini-symposium, experts from neuronal imaging as well as neuroinformaticians are invited to discuss future needs with the goal of documenting these requirements for later implementation and community adoption.

• Giorgio Ascoli, George Mason University, USA
• Erhan Bas, Janelia Research Campus, USA
• Weiliang Chen, OIST
• Hermann Cuntz, Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI), Frankfurt, Germany
• Jinny Kim, KIST, Korea
• Yoshiyuki Kubota, NIPS, Japan
• Adrian W. Moore: RIKEN BSI, Japan
• Hanchuan Peng, Allen Brain Institute, USA
• Chi-Tin Shih, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
• Gaia Tavosanis, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Germany
• Ben Torben-Nielsen, University of Hertfordshire, UK
  (Speaker list is subject to change. Thank you for your understanding)

Main organizer
Erik De Schutter (Computational Neuroscience Unit)

For further information visit the mini-symposium website