Morphological Analysis Of Long-Range Projection Pyramidal Neurons In Mice Visual Cortex

The fine structure of the neurons is the basis of the neural circuit,and the morphological features of the neurons are important for understanding the brain structures and functions.In recent years,with the progress of fluorescent labeling technology and optical imaging technology,high-resolution data sets containing neuron signals have been obtained at the micron level,which provides a strong guarantee for the study of neuronal morphology.However,due to the contradiction between the field of view and the resolution of the microscopic optical imaging technology,the image is uneven and the bright fringes exist.Image processing is needed to improve the image quality.At the same time,the neuronal branch structure is complex and widely distributed in the whole brain,which makes it difficult to reconstruct and analyze the morphological characteristics of neurons in the whole brain.In this paper,the visual cortex of the mouse was selected as the research object,and the morphological characteristics of the long-range projection pyramidal neurons were analyzed.The whole analysis included the following four parts:(1)Based on the high-resolution data collected by the microscopic optical imaging system,the image processing operations,such as image splicing,de-fringing,are used to obtain high-quality data sets.(2)38 long-range projection pyramid neurons in the visual cortex of the mice were reconstructed by hand,and the reconstructed results were saved as vector files.Three-dimensional visualization of neuron fine structure based on web was implemented;(3)Based on the reconstructed neuron data,the length,height,branch number of the dendrites and the length,branch number,end points of axons were obtained,which was used to analyze the neuronal morphology.In this paper,the morphology of the long-range projection pyramidal neurons in the visual cortex was analyzed.The dendritic classification results were obtained based on the parameters such as the height and the branch numbers of the apical dendrite.Based on the end of the axon projection,the connection between visual cortex and other brain regions was acquired,which benefits the understanding of the structure and function of visual cortex.Visualizing the fine structure of neurons and its classification results via the web can facilitate the sharing of information.The application of analytical method to the whole brain can contribute to the study of brain structure and function.