Help your students become familiar with neural data

Have a look at published datasets with your class and make your students annotate neural data themselves.

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WEBKNOSSOS for Educators

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Look at published datasets with your class

Have a look at various publications online and navigate quickly through amazing datasets. Zoom in and out to observe the neurons' nuclei, dendrites, axons, identify synapses, etc. Discuss the images you see with your students and use them to support your neurobiological teaching. 

Through WEBKNOSSOS, you can have access to electron microscopy images, X-ray tomographies (CT), fluorescence microscopy images, and MRI.
Look at a published dataset now.

Example: EM data from Motta et al. 2019, segmentation by scalable minds

Let your students gain practical annotation experience and support you in your research

Make your students dive into the practical world and show them how to annotate neural cells. Each of the students can create a free account and start analysing. If you upload your own dataset, they can support you with your research!
Your class will quickly become familiar with the different ways to annotate experimental data as they create skeletons or build a dense segmentation, thanks to WEBKNOSSOS' annotation features. This way, your students will understand the challenges and scope of such an analysis and will be able to experiment as much as they want.

Example: Annotations and EM data from Schmidt et al. 2017

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Everything simply online!

WEBKNOSSOS is to be used completely online. Neither your students nor you will have to install anything. Just send a link to your class and they can start working right away!
Moreover, WEBKNOSSOS' storage and streaming technology provides fast browsing speeds to any computer or laptop. Your students won't need any specific hardware requirements to enjoy working with such neural data.

Example: EM data from Motta et al. 2019, segmentation by scalable minds

Support for many modalities

WEBKNOSSOS works with all sorts of 2D and 3D image modalities including multi-channel data.

    Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
    Transmission electron microscopy (TEM)
    Serial block-face scanning electron microscopy (SBEM)
    Focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM)
    Serial section electron microscopy (ssSEM, S3EM, ssTEM)
    X-ray tomography (CT) and Micro-CT (µCT)
    Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
    Fluorescence microscopy

Examples (from left): Fluorescence microscopy from Drawitsch et al. 2018, Synchrotron X-Ray Tomography from Kuan et al. 2020 and MRI from Lüsebrink et al. 2017

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Student exercises with WEBKNOSSOS

WEBKNOSSOS is an great tool to help students become familiar with neural data and explore the brain's structure in 3D, all without requiring installation. Have a look at these free exercises below, and in just a few clicks from their browser, your students will have the opportunity to discover fascinating science!

01. Neuroanatomy exercises

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Credits: Prof. David Berson, Brown University

The following exercises will help your students get familiar with connectomic analysis of retinal neurons. Using WEBKNOSSOS and the data annotated by the Berson lab, the students will explore structures of interest in their context. Next, they will be tracing an unknown retinal ganglion cell. In the last task, they will be identifying the types of bipolar cells that provide excitatory input to a ganglion cell which has already been reconstructed. 
In working through these exercises, students are doing the same things professional neuroanatomists do to build comprehensive connectomes for single cells, for single cell types, and for all the cell types in that chunk of the CNS.

02. Cell biology exercises

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Credits: scalable minds

These exercises are ideal for medical students looking to deepen their understanding of brain structure. The students will have the chance to explore the brain in 3D at high resolution, identify cellular processes, and recognize synapses in an engaging and interactive way.
The dataset used for these exercises represents a section of layer 4 of the mouse cortex. It was acquired by Motta et al. (Science, 2019) and reconstructed using AI by Scalable Minds.