Automatic recognition and analysis of synapses

An automatic system for recognizing synaptic junctions would allow analysis of large samples of tissue for the possible classification of specific well-defined sets of synapses based upon structural morphometric indices. In this paper the three steps of our system are described: (1) cytochemical tissue preparation to allow easy recognition of the synaptic junctions; (2) transmitting the tissue information to a computer; and (3) analyzing each field to recognize the synapses and make measurements on them.