Mapping the brain with machine learning
University of Pennsylvania
Neuroscientists have long sought a "connectome" - a wiring diagram for the brain. The complexity and sheer number of neurons make it impractical to map a brain by hand, but an automated approach is increasingly possible. In this talk, I will present an overview of algorithms for tracing individual neurons and their connectivity from microscope images of brain tissue. In particular, I will discuss deep learning methods for image segmentation, the kinds of errors such algorithms make, and approaches for fixing these errors without human intervention.