Interactive extraction of neural structures with user-guided morphological diffusion

Abstract

Extracting neural structures with their fine details from confocal volumes is essential to quantitative analysis in neurobiology research. Despite the abundance of various segmentation methods and tools, for complex neural structures, both manual and semi-automatic methods are ine ective either in full 3D or when user interactions are restricted to 2D slices. Novel interaction techniques and fast algorithms are demanded by neurobiologists to interactively and intuitively extract neural structures from confocal data. In this paper, we present such an algorithm-technique combination, which lets users interactively select desired structures from visualization results instead of 2D slices. By integrating the segmentation functions with a confocal visualization tool neurobiologists can easily extract complex neural structures within their typical visualization workflow.

Independent and Collaborative Visualization Tool Development

“…We designed the interactive segmentation functions in FluoRender after the brush tool in Photoshop, both used for selecting and editing. 9 It requires more skill and patience when 3-D data are processed. However, users already familiar with Photoshop often feel the FluoRender brush tool intuitive and quick to master.…”