Automated Analysis of Remyelination Therapy for Spinal Cord Injury

Demyelinationthe loss of myelin sheath that insulates axons, is a prominent feature in many neurological disorders resulting in spinal cord injury (SCI). The lost myelin sheath can be replaced by remyelination, used in SCI treatment. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for efficient automated analysis of remyelination therapy. We use a robust, shape-independent algorithm based on iso-contour analysis of the image at progressively increasing intensity levels for detecting cell boundaries. The detected boundaries of spatially clustered cells are then separated using Delaunay triangulation based contour separation method. The therapeutically important oligodendrocyte-remyelinated axons (OR-axons) are identified and a density map is generated for efficacy analysis of the therapy. Our efficient automated remyelination analysis significantly reduces error due to human subjectivity. We corroborate the accuracy of our results by extensive cross-verification by the domain experts.