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Automated Axon Counting in Rodent Optic Nerve Sections with AxonJ
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Automated Axon Counting in Rodent Optic Nerve Sections with AxonJ

Kasra Zarei, Todd E Scheetz, Mark Christopher, Kathy Miller, Adam Hedberg-Buenz, Anamika Tandon, Michael G Anderson, John H Fingert and Michael David Abràmoff
Scientific reports, Vol.6(1), 26559
05/26/2016
DOI: 10.1038/srep26559
PMCID: PMC4881014
PMID: 27226405
url
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep26559View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

We have developed a publicly available tool, AxonJ, which quantifies the axons in optic nerve sections of rodents stained with paraphenylenediamine (PPD). In this study, we compare AxonJ's performance to human experts on 100x and 40x images of optic nerve sections obtained from multiple strains of mice, including mice with defects relevant to glaucoma. AxonJ produced reliable axon counts with high sensitivity of 0.959 and high precision of 0.907, high repeatability of 0.95 when compared to a gold-standard of manual assessments and high correlation of 0.882 to the glaucoma damage staging of a previously published dataset. AxonJ allows analyses that are quantitative, consistent, fully-automated, parameter-free, and rapid on whole optic nerve sections at 40x. As a freely available ImageJ plugin that requires no highly specialized equipment to utilize, AxonJ represents a powerful new community resource augmenting studies of the optic nerve using mice.
Algorithms Optic Nerve - pathology Animals Phenylenediamines Axons - pathology Cell Count Humans Staining and Labeling Glaucoma - pathology Mice Disease Models, Animal

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