Use of DeTerm for Automated Drosophila Dendrite Arbor Terminal Counts

Neurons have a complex dendritic architecture that governs information flow through a circuit. Manual quantification of dendritic arbor morphometrics is time-consuming and can be inaccurate. Automated quantification systems such as DeTerm help to overcome these limitations. DeTerm is a software tool that automatically recognizes dendrite branch terminals with high precision. It uses an artificial neural network to label the terminals, count them, and provide each terminal's positional data. DeTerm can recognize the dendritic terminals of Drosophila dendritic arborization (da) neurons, and it can also examine other types of neurons, including mouse Purkinje cells. It is freely available and works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Here, we describe the use of DeTerm.