A computational framework for studying neuron morphology from in vitro high content neuron-based screening

High content neuron image processing is considered as an important method for quantitative neurobiological studies. The main goal of analysis in this paper is to provide automatic image processing approaches to process neuron images for studying neuron mechanism in high content screening. In the nuclei channel, all nuclei are segmented and detected by applying the gradient vector field based watershed. Then the neuronal nuclei are selected based on the soma region detected in neurite channel. In neurite images, we propose a novel neurite centerline extraction approach using the improved line-pixel detection technique. The proposed neurite tracing method can detect the curvilinear structure more accurately compared with the current existing methods. An interface called NeuritelQ based on the proposed algorithms is developed finally for better application in high content screening. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.