Kernel: Python 3
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Quantifying spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish
We want to quantify the amount of fluorescent cells in a wounded zebrafish embryo spinal column:
The key steps are:
estimating the position and width of the cord
estimating the average fluorescence along the length of the cord
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SciPy to estimate coordinates
First, we get just the top and bottom rows of pixels, and use a 1D gaussian filter to smooth the signal.
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With smooth curves, we can get the mode (the position of the center) and width of the signal.
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scikit-image to trace the profile
Now, use measure.profile_line
to trace from (0, top_mode
) to (-1, bottom_mode
).
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Finally, plot the trace.
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From this trace, we can compute various summary statistics (e.g. min/max, gap width, slope, etc), and plot these over time as the wound recovers.
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