Automated morphometric analysis with SMorph software reveals plasticity induced by antidepressant therapy in hippocampal astrocytes

ABSTRACT Nervous system development and plasticity involve changes in cellular morphology, making morphological analysis a valuable exercise the study of nervous development, function disease. Morphological is time-consuming requiring meticulous manual tracing contours extensions. We have developed software tool, called SMorph, to rapidly analyze morphology cells system. SMorph performs completely automated Sholl analysis. It extracts 23 morphometric features based on cell images parameters, followed by principal component (PCA). was tested neurons, astrocytes microglia reveals subtle morphology. Using we found that chronic 21-day treatment with antidepressant desipramine results significant structural remodeling hippocampal mice. Given proposed involvement astroglial atrophy major depression humans, our reveal novel kind induced administration.