Seizure event detection using intravital two-photon calcium imaging data

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Intravital cellular calcium imaging offers insights into neuronal microcircuitry and seizure activity, crucial for understanding epilepsy.
• Traditional electrophysiology methods for seizure activity are abundant, but calcium imaging methods are limited.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an automated algorithmic framework for detecting seizure-related events using calcium imaging.
• To enable detection of pre-ictal spike events, seizure wavefront propagation, and terminal spreading waves at both population and single-cell levels.

Main Methods:

• Developed an algorithm for precise recruitment detection of population and individual cells during seizure events.
• Leveraged averaged population activity and high-magnitude slope features for detecting single-cell pre-ictal spike and seizure recruitment.
• Applied the algorithm to awake in vivo two-photon calcium imaging data during pentylenetetrazol-induced seizures in mice.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated concordance between algorithm-detected recruitment times and expert visual labels.
• Showed sufficient accuracy to model the spatiotemporal progression of seizure-associated traveling waves.
• Validated the algorithm's ability to detect cell recruitment during seizures.

Conclusions:

• The developed algorithm enables accurate cell recruitment detection during seizure dynamics.
• This tool is valuable for researchers utilizing calcium imaging to study epilepsy and neuronal network activity.