Surf Ice

Surf Ice is a tool for surface rendering the cortex with overlays to illustrate tractography, network connections, anatomical atlases and statistical maps. While there are many alternatives, Surf Ice is easy to use and uses advances shaders to generate stunning images. It supports many popular mesh formats [3ds, ac3d, BrainVoyager (srf), ctm, Collada (dae), dfs, dxf, FreeSurfer (Asc, Srf, Curv, gcs, Pial, W), GIfTI (gii), gts, lwo, ms3d, mz3, nv, obj, off, ply, stl, vtk], connectome formats (edge/node) and tractography formats [bfloat, pdb, tck, trk, vtk]. Surf Ice uses three stages to draw your image. The first two stages are computed in 3D and create both an image (left column) and a depth buffer (right column). The first stage draws all the items, while the second stage omits the background anatomical image. The final stage uses the 2D outputs of the prior stages. The depth map from the first stage is used to estimate ambient occlusion (SSAO), and the difference between the depth maps from the previous stages allows the software to infer the depth of the overlays behind the background (depth). The SSAO and depth images are composited with the images from the first two stages to generate the final image.

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3D Slicer

3D Slicer is: A software platform for the analysis (including registration and interactive segmentation) and visualization (including volume rendering) of medical images and for research in image guided therapy. A free, open source software available on multiple operating systems: Linux, MacOSX and Windows Extensible, with powerful plug-in capabilities for adding algorithms and applications. Features include: Multi organ: from head to toe. Support for multi-modality imaging including, MRI, CT, US, nuclear medicine, and microscopy. Bidirectional interface for devices. There is no restriction on use, but Slicer is not approved for clinical use and intended for research. Permissions and compliance with applicable rules are the responsibility of the user.

Data analysis and visualisation

3DSpineS

Dendritic spines of pyramidal neurons are the targets of most excitatory synapses in the cerebral cortex and their morphology appears to be critical from the functional point of view. Thus, characterizing this morphology is necessary to link structural and functional spine data and thus interpret and make them more meaningful. We have used a large database of more than 7,000 individually 3D reconstructed dendritic spines from human cortical pyramidal neurons that is first transformed into a set of 54 quantitative features characterizing spine geometry mathematically. The resulting data set is grouped into spine clusters based on a probabilistic model with Gaussian finite mixtures. We uncover six groups of spines whose discriminative characteristics are identified with machine learning methods as a set of rules. The clustering model allows us to simulate accurate spines from human pyramidal neurons to suggest new hypotheses of the functional organization of these cells.

Data analysis and visualisationData

3D Structure Tensor Analysis

A Structure Tensor Analysis (STA) tool for the characterization of local 3D orientation in TIFF image stacks. This tool is based on the evaluation of local image intensity gradients. In addition to the local 3D orientation, it also provides a full analysis of local gradient strength, structure disarray, shape and fractional anisotropy indices.

Data analysis and visualisation

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3D Slicer

3DSpineS

3D Structure Tensor Analysis

Make the most out of EBRAINS