Develop Analysis System Based on Drosophila Head Images

After the human genome project complete, brain research becomes one of international cooperation projects. By constructing the human brain map and the interaction networks of neurons, it is helpful for understanding the neurological diseases and designing novel drugs. However, the human brain research is hard to do based on the restrictions of human experiments and the limited resources. Therefore, Drosophila is one of the suitable model organisms to study the brain function and structure. Brain research center in the National Tsing Hua University is an outstanding group for Drosophila brain science. The first three-dimensional map of the Drosophila brain imaging is released by this center in 2011. Currently, this center has made the image data of Drosophila head. By the Drosophila head images, they can be used to understand the operation models between the Drosophila brain and head, and then made the outstanding contributions for the human brain research. However, it poses a huge challenge for the computer science by processing these Drosophila head images. The design of new technology is essential to overcome the huge computational complexity and storage requirements. Therefore, the goal of this project is to develop analysis system based on Drosophila head images. The following will outline the objectives of each year: First year, we will design the compression and comparison techniques for Drosophila head images. We also will propose the alignment methods to find the union/intersection of Drosophila head images. A website will be built to provide the service of querying the above analysis results. Second year, we will develop the visualization scheme for Drosophila head images. We also will design the comparison techniques for the skeleton (line-set) data of Drosophila head images. A website will be built to provide the service of presenting the above visualization results. Third year, we will construct the interaction networks of Drosophila head images. We also will analyze these interaction networks and construct the whole map of Drosophila head images. A website will be built to provide the service of mining the above interaction networks.

Project ID:PB10703-1489
External Project ID:MOST106-2221-E182-070