Projectome: Set up and testing of a High Performance Computational Infrastructure for processing and visualizing neuro-anatomical information obtained using confocal ultra-microscopy techniques

In Projectome we set up an IT infrastructure to share both neuroscience data as well as high performance computational applications. Data handled in Projectome are mouse brain images obtained using conf-u [1], a confocal ultra-microscopy technique in which selectively labeled neurons are imaged by light-sheet based microscopy [2][3] with micron-scale resolution. Data obtained from an experiment conducted on a mouse brain (1 cubic cm) might be of a range of 1 Terabyte, or more. Specific processes have been implemented in a Projectome Tooolkit in order to allow: 1) fully automated 3D Stitching capability starting from acquired raw data and 2) semi-automatic extraction of some morphological characteristics (eg. neurons localization) [1][4].