Abstract

High-content neuronal screening has recently become a powerful high-throughput methodology for identifying and studying molecules or chemical compounds that regulate neuronal morphology, such as the patterns of neurite outgrowth and the size distributions of cell clusters. Such studies are expected to be an increasingly utilized approach in drug discovery and in vitro study of nervous systems. A typical high-content neuronal screening project generates hundreds of thousands high resolution images of neuronal cell cultures with highly complex morphology. It is of great challenge to reliably and automatically analyze a large quantity of such images. We have developed a robust image analysis method for automatically analyzing the complex morphology of neuronal cell cultures. This method has been one of the key innovations that enabled high-throughput genetic and drug discovery screening using neuronal cells.