Exploring the connectome: petascale volume visualization of microscopy data streams

IEEE Comput Graph Appl. 2013 Jul-Aug;33(4):50-61. doi: 10.1109/MCG.2013.55.

Abstract

Recent advances in high-resolution microscopy let neuroscientists acquire neural-tissue volume data of extremely large sizes. However, the tremendous resolution and the high complexity of neural structures present big challenges to storage, processing, and visualization at interactive rates. A proposed system provides interactive exploration of petascale (petavoxel) volumes resulting from high-throughput electron microscopy data streams. The system can concurrently handle multiple volumes and can support the simultaneous visualization of high-resolution voxel segmentation data. Its visualization-driven design restricts most computations to a small subset of the data. It employs a multiresolution virtual-memory architecture for better scalability than previous approaches and for handling incomplete data. Researchers have employed it for a 1-teravoxel mouse cortex volume, of which several hundred axons and dendrites as well as synapses have been segmented and labeled.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Brain / cytology
  • Brain / physiology
  • Brain Chemistry
  • Computer Graphics*
  • Connectome*
  • Database Management Systems*
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / methods
  • Mice
  • Microscopy, Electron*
  • Rats