Specialized Information Systems for Image Analysis in Physiological Studies

Abstract

and medicine is one of the most important study tools, as investigations of many current questions in a wide range of scientific directions, including physiology, use images as the initial data form. The first stage in the establishment of the Image Processing Center at the Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1996 has been discussed previously [2]. The center was developed as part of Project No. 225 (April 13, 2001) under the auspices of the Federal “State Support for the Integration of Higher Education and Basic Science” program (3.2, “Creation of collective industrial-academic centers with state-of-the-art equipment”). The center became the “Collective Biological and Medical Image Processing Center.” The main user was the Institute of Physiology, while others included St. Petersburg State University and St. Petersburg State Medical University. Financial support for the center under the heading “Development and introduction of information systems for biological image processing and analysis” was continued in 2002 in the framework of the “Mechanisms of adaptive behavior: intracellular signal transduction and gene expression” program of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Expansion of the computerized resources of the center provided biological and medical science research institutions and companies with the ability to process images, as well as facilities for training students and involving them in investigations in the framework of the integration of academic and industrial science. Scientific research programs involving students, post-graduate scientists, and post-doctoral scientists were developed using state-of-the-art computerized image processing methods. The main aim of the present article is to inform colleagues working in different areas of physiology and obtaining experimental data as images of the new capabilities of the center, particularly specialized information systems (SIS) which have been developed and to invite them to take part in collaborative studies. New video-based computer systems are continually being created at the center for processing images in different laboratories of the institute, and new specialized SIS have been developed. These support image processing, formation of databases in subject areas, and the export of results into statistical analysis programs. The facilities at the center support the processing of static and dynamic images of any physiological and biological nature. They provide for the analysis of images reflecting the structural-functional organization of neural networks in the brain, the structural-functional organization of autonomic processes, the neurogenic mechanisms of activity of the internal organs, and the genetic mechanisms of organisms. Images reflecting the mechanisms of sensory and cognitive processes are analyzed, as are those related to the psychophysical image recognition patterns, the mechanisms of neuroendocrine regulation, and the formation of pathological CNS states. Our approach in creating SIS for image processing consists of using the physiological principles of the organiNeuroscience and Behavioral Physiology, Vol. 41, No. 7, September, 2011