Content area
Full text
About the Authors:
Juan Prada
Contributed equally to this work with: Juan Prada, Manju Sasi
Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Software, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
Affiliation: Department of Bioinformatics, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
Manju Sasi
Contributed equally to this work with: Juan Prada, Manju Sasi
Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology
Affiliation: Institute of Clinical Neurobiology, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
Corinna Martin
Roles Data curation, Formal analysis
Affiliation: Institute of Clinical Neurobiology, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
Sibylle Jablonka
Roles Funding acquisition, Methodology
Affiliation: Institute of Clinical Neurobiology, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
Thomas Dandekar
Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Software, Supervision, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
* E-mail: [email protected] (TD); [email protected] (RB)
¶‡ TD and RB also contributed equally to this work.
Affiliation: Department of Bioinformatics, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1886-7625
Robert Blum
Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Supervision, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
* E-mail: [email protected] (TD); [email protected] (RB)
¶‡ TD and RB also contributed equally to this work.
Affiliation: Institute of Clinical Neurobiology, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5270-3854Abstract
Local and spontaneous calcium signals play important roles in neurons and neuronal networks. Spontaneous or cell-autonomous calcium signals may be difficult to assess because they appear in an unpredictable spatiotemporal pattern and in very small neuronal loci of axons or dendrites. We developed an open source bioinformatics tool for an unbiased assessment of calcium signals in x,y-t imaging series. The tool bases its algorithm on a continuous wavelet transform-guided peak detection to identify calcium signal candidates. The highly sensitive calcium event definition is based on identification of peaks in 1D data through analysis of a 2D wavelet transform surface. For spatial analysis, the tool uses a grid to separate the x,y-image field in independently analyzed grid windows. A document containing a graphical summary of the data is automatically created and displays the loci of activity for a wide range of signal intensities. Furthermore, the number of activity events is summed up to create an estimated total activity value, which can be used to compare different experimental situations, such as calcium activity before or after...