Technology Overview

Methodology for a fully automated processing pipeline of microscopy images, more specifically of tissue containing microglia/immune cells.

It can support the research task of analysing and exploring this type of cells and it could be generalize for its use as a diagnostic tool for neuropathology assessments.

Though this method has been tailored for microglia/immune cells, it could be generalized to other types of glial/brain cells, with the proper parameter tuning.

MIC-MAC is open source. The newer version is completely stand-alone and a dedicated GUI is being developed for improving the user experience.

Benefits

Fast and reliable method for the analysis of large sections of immunostained human brain (or other species) samples and the identification of different types of cells and sub-populations
Automatic and unbiased computation of a rich and coherent spectrum of morphologies
Novel iterative cell extraction technique compared to other commercial solutions
Potential to perform different analyses and comparisons with the information computed
Fully automated pipeline, with interactive parameter tuning for achieving high quality data extraction

Applications

This invention could lead to a support/diagnostic tool for neuropathology.

Micmac Computational Method for Characterization of Microglia Alterations