Quantificação da distribuição celular em imagens de culturas primárias de gânglio da raiz dorsal em interface com matrizes multieletrodo (original) (raw)

Microelectrode arrays (MEAs) can stimulate and record extracellular electrical activities from neurons in culture over long periods and neuronal arrangements can greatly influence the electrical activity recorded by MEAs. This setup is a very interesting platform for neuroprosthesis studies. Using images obtained by confocal fluorescence microscopy, we propose methodological tools aimed at quantitatively studying neural network topology on microelectrodes, based on a threedimensional perspective. Here, we propose a system that generates polygonal 3D representations, which is capable to perform full-automated quantitative analysis, in terms of cell morphology and distribution with respect to microelectrodes, that was applied to dorsal root ganglia (DRG) cultures. Information about microelectrodes shape and position are extracted directly from a transmission light channel of the microscope, and it is used to compute a map of the distances between the neurons and the microelectrodes. Results point out that our proposal is capable of efficiently reducing false-positive reconstructions in an interactive way, and that quantitative analysis provides a simple description of the culture attached to the MEA, in terms of cell density, cell spatial distribution, neuronal vicinity to microelectrodes, glial cell density. Thus, it is possible to characterize the neuron-electrode interface, so that to compare different biological protocols in order to enable efficient electrical activity recordings.