AUTHOR=Li Yuxin , Gong Hui , Yang Xiaoquan , Yuan Jing , Jiang Tao , Li Xiangning , Sun Qingtao , Zhu Dan , Wang Zhenyu , Luo Qingming , Li Anan TITLE=TDat: An Efficient Platform for Processing Petabyte-Scale Whole-Brain Volumetric Images JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neural Circuits VOLUME=11 YEAR=2017 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neural-circuits/articles/10.3389/fncir.2017.00051 DOI=10.3389/fncir.2017.00051 ISSN=1662-5110 ABSTRACT=

Three-dimensional imaging of whole mammalian brains at single-neuron resolution has generated terabyte (TB)- and even petabyte (PB)-sized datasets. Due to their size, processing these massive image datasets can be hindered by the computer hardware and software typically found in biological laboratories. To fill this gap, we have developed an efficient platform named TDat, which adopts a novel data reformatting strategy by reading cuboid data and employing parallel computing. In data reformatting, TDat is more efficient than any other software. In data accessing, we adopted parallelization to fully explore the capability for data transmission in computers. We applied TDat in large-volume data rigid registration and neuron tracing in whole-brain data with single-neuron resolution, which has never been demonstrated in other studies. We also showed its compatibility with various computing platforms, image processing software and imaging systems.