SNEMI3D: 3D Segmentation of neurites in EM images

In this challenge, a full stack of electron microscopy (EM) slices will be used to train machine-learning algorithms for the purpose of automatic segmentation of neurites in 3D. This imaging technique visualizes the resulting volumes in a highly anisotropic way, i.e., the x- and y-directions have a high resolution, whereas the z-direction has a low resolution, primarily dependent on the precision of serial cutting. EM produces the images as a projection of the whole section, so some of the neural membranes that are not orthogonal to a cutting plane can appear very blurred. None of these problems led to major difficulties in the manual labeling of each neurite in the image stack by an expert human neuro-anatomist.

In order to gauge the current state-of-the-art in automated neurite segmentation on EM and compare between different methods, we are organizing a 3D Segmentation of neurites in EM images (SNEMI3D) challenge in conjunction with the ISBI 2013 conference. For this purpose, we are making available a large training dataset of mouse cortex in which the neurites have been manually delineated. In addition, we also provide a test dataset where the 3D labels are not available. The aim of the challenge is to compare and rank the different competing methods based on their object classification accuracy in three dimensions.

The image data used in the challenge was produced by Lichtman Lab at Harvard University (Daniel R. Berger, Richard Schalek, Narayanan "Bobby" Kasthuri, Juan-Carlos Tapia, Kenneth Hayworth, Jeff W. Lichtman) and manually annotated by Daniel R. Berger. Their corresponding biological findings were published in Cell (2015).