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Estimating the location and size of retinal injections from orthogonal images of an intact retina


Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Hjorth, JJ Johannes 
Savier, Elise 
Sterratt, David C 
Reber, Michaël 

Abstract

Background : To study the mapping from the retina to the brain, typically a small region of the retina is injected with a dye, which then propagates to the retina's target structures. To determine the location of the injection, usually the retina is dissected out of the eye, attened and then imaged, causing tears and stretching of the retina. The location of the injection is then estimated from the image of the attened retina. Here we propose a new method that avoids dissection of the retina.

Results : We have developed IntactEye, a software package that uses two orthogonal images of the intact retina to locate focal injections of a dye. The two images are taken while the retina is still inside the eye. This bypasses the dissection step, avoiding unnecessary damage to the retina, and speeds up data acquisition. By using the native spherical coordinates of the eye, we avoid distortions caused by interpreting a curved structure in a at coordinate system. Our method compares well to the projection method and to the Retistruct package, which both use the attened retina as a starting point. We have tested the method also on synthetic data, where the injection location is known. Our method has been designed for analysing mouse retinas, where there are no visible landmarks for discerning retinal orientation, but can also be applied to retinas from other species.

Conclusions : IntactEye allows the user to precisely specify the location and size of a retinal injection from two orthogonal images taken of the eye. We are solving the abstract problem of locating a point on a spherical object from two orthogonal images, which might have applications outside the field of neuroscience.

Description

Keywords

retinotopic mapping, retinal injection, native coordinate system

Journal Title

BMC Neuroscience

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1471-2202
1471-2202

Volume Title

16

Publisher

BioMed Central
Sponsorship
SJE and MR gratefully acknowledge the support of the University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study (USIAS). SJE and JJJH were supported by the Wellcome Trust (grant number 083205). The authors wish to thank Ellese Cotterill for analysing synthetic data for verification of accuracy.