A SCI research team, lead by Dr. Tolga Tasdizen and Dr. Ross Whitaker, in collaboration with Dr. Robert Marc and his team at the Moran Eye Center have recently completed a 3D neurocircuitry map of every cell in the retina of a rabbit's eye. This data is a huge milestone on the way to building a complete description of the neurocircuitry that allows mammals to see. By comparing healthy samples with those undergoing disease processes, neuroscientists hope to develop a detailed understanding of how many diseases cause blindness and hopefully find ways to stop or even reverse the deterioration. The Neural Circuit Reconstruction Toolset used to construct this unprecedented map from thousands of individual electron microscope images was developed here at the SCI Institute and is currently available for download for free. The massive 20GB dataset will also eventually be made available on the web.
Congratulations go out to the SCI Research team comprised of Dr. Tolga Tasdizen (Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering), Dr. Ross Whitaker, Liz Jurrus, Kannan UV, Joel Spaltenstein, Pavel Koshevoy, Brad Grimm, and Antonio Paiva, as well at our Marc Lab collaborators, Dr. Robert Marc, Dr. Bryan Jones and James Anderson.
For more information, see:
James R. Anderson, Bryan W. Jones, Jia-Hui Yang, Marguerite V. Shaw, Carl B. Watt, Pavel Koshevoy, Joel Spaltenstein, Elizabeth Jurrus, Kannan UV, Ross T. Whitaker, David Mastronarde, Tolga Tasdizen, Robert E. Marc. "A Computational Framework for Ultrastructural Mapping of Neural Circuitry" PLoS Biology, Vol. 7, No. 3, e74, 2009.