Community Coding & Analysis

Feature Requests
#1

It would be amazing if somehow a user on the site could type something like:


neuron_groups = group_neurons_by_on_or_off_firing_pattern (all_neurons);
plot_3d_neurons ( neuron_groups, color_by_group );

or

plot_left   ( find_a_neuron_by_retinal_position(   nasal   ).sholl_analysis()  );
plot_right ( find_a_neuron_by_retinal_position( temporal ).sholl_analysis()  );

or (when there are more than just  ganglion cells in the database)

plot_left   (  all_neurons.to_skeleton(), color_by_neuron_id )
plot_right (  all_neurons.to_wiring_diagram(), arrange_by_wiring_length )

It would be neat if to_skeleton(),  to_wiring_diagram(), sholl_analysis() were functions written by the community, tagged, voted on, combined into higher-level functions, (maybe even ‘scored’ by how often they get used in other people’s functions) etc.

I can’t imagine how you’d implement this but - it would be pretty cool if there were a community code repository, where all the code runs on your side with hooks into the neuron database and sends results back to the browser.  Citizen scientist may get to be a little more like a real-life scientist!
#2

Hi imalsogreg,


Welcome to the eyewire forums!  These are some very interesting ideas!  I would definitely like to move in this direction eventually.  Unfortunately, we might be further from this that you’d hope.  We have only segmented a few neurons, so our database would be rather small for the time being.

What we are looking into is the possibility of opening up an API that would allow other developers access to our data and maybe even our models.  This would be at a much coarser level that what you are proposing (3d voxel data and meshes), but would be a step in the direction that you are proposing.  I can’t promise anything anytime soon, because it’s more of a medium/long term vision, but we are hoping to make some movement in that direction, so stay tuned!