Bayesian image recovery for dendritic structures under low signal-to-noise conditions

Experimental research seeking to quantify neuronal structure constantly contends with restrictions on image resolution and variability. In particular, experimentalists often need to analyze images with very low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In many experiments, dye toxicity scales with the light intensity; this leads experimentalists to reduce image SNR in order to preserve the viability of the specimen. In this paper, we present a Bayesian approach for estimating the neuronal shape given low-SNR observations. This Bayesian framework has two major advantages. First, the method effectively incorporates known facts about 1) the image formation process, including blur and the Poisson nature of image noise at low intensities, and 2) dendritic shape, including the fact that dendrites are simply-connected geometric structures with smooth boundaries. Second, we may employ standard Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques for quantifying the posterior uncertainty in our estimate of the dendritic shape. We describe an efficient computational implementation of these methods and demonstrate the algorithm's performance on simulated noisy two-photon laser-scanning microscopy images.