Neuroscience in the Database Mapping the Morphology of Neurons and Synapses with CATMAID and PostGIS
Channel: Crunchy Data
Date: 01/12/2021

Tom Kazimiers from kazmos GmbH presents at PostGIS Day 2021. We had heard there were unique use cases for PostGIS outside the world of mapping and Tom Kazimiers wowed us with how his research team uses PostGIS to map the Drosophila brain. CATMAID is a collaborative, web-based tool for online 2D/3D image browsing, image annotation, neuron reconstruction, proof reading and network analysis. It is used mainly in the context of neuroscience research and more info can be found on www.catmaid.org. CATMAID uses PostGIS to represent millions of 3D line segments and 3D meshes to represent neurons and synapses as well brain compartments, respectively. Common are bounding box queries and other intersection queries to filter these datasets for display and analysis. Current development is funded in part by National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative grant 1RF1MH120679-01. Slides available at https://files.kazmos.de/talks/2021-11-18-postgis-day-tom-kazimiers-neuroscience-in-the-database.pdf.