Doug Ehlenberger

• Department of Neuroscience
• Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Box 1023
• One Gustave L. Levy Place
• New York, NY 10029, USA
• Phone: 1-212-241-1521
• Fax: 1-212-860-4630
• Email: douglas.ehlenberger@mssm.edu

I am developing software to assist in the scientific study of the morphology and function of neurons. I have a B.S. in Biology from the University of Miami (completed in 1994), a B.A. in Computer Science from Rutgers University (completed in 2001), and a M.S. in Computer Science from American Sentinel University (completed in 2008).

Previous projects include a system for integrating volumetric data produced by confocal laser scanning named VIAS. Neurons are imaged in separate columns producing stacks of two dimensional images. These stacks can then be tiled in 3-D by the software to produce any full sized volume. Our software produces projections of the stacks to accomplish this alignment. The system also allows for integration of subsections of the data, thereby providing an efficient means of dealing with overlap and shift.

Figure: Wireframe rendering of the surface generated by the Rayburst Algorithm. The mesh is shown overlayed on a volume rendered spine in NeuronStudio.

Current work has focused on a project named NeuronStudio (See also Wikipedia). This software is an automated system for digitization, 3D reconstruction and geometric analysis of detailed and accurate neuronal morphology, capable of handling morphologic details on scales spanning local spine geometry through complex tree topology to the gross spatial arrangement of multi-neuron networks.

The tools and technologies I use the most are C, Linux/Ubuntu, OpenGL, Windows Platform SDK, GTK+, Javascript, HTML/DHTML/XHTML, CSS, MySQL, Apache, and SQL.