🍩 Database of Original & Non-Theoretical Uses of Topology

(found 2 matches in 0.001376s)

  1. Dissecting Glial Scar Formation by Spatial Point Pattern and Topological Data Analysis (2024)

    Daniel Manrique-Castano, Dhananjay Bhaskar, Ayman ElAli
    Abstract Glial scar formation represents a fundamental response to central nervous system (CNS) injuries. It is mainly characterized by a well-defined spatial rearrangement of reactive astrocytes and microglia. The mechanisms underlying glial scar formation have been extensively studied, yet quantitative descriptors of the spatial arrangement of reactive glial cells remain limited. Here, we present a novel approach using point pattern analysis (PPA) and topological data analysis (TDA) to quantify spatial patterns of reactive glial cells after experimental ischemic stroke in mice. We provide open and reproducible tools using R and Julia to quantify spatial intensity, cell covariance and conditional distribution, cell-to-cell interactions, and short/long-scale arrangement, which collectively disentangle the arrangement patterns of the glial scar. This approach unravels a substantial divergence in the distribution of GFAP+ and IBA1+ cells after injury that conventional analysis methods cannot fully characterize. PPA and TDA are valuable tools for studying the complex spatial arrangement of reactive glia and other nervous cells following CNS injuries and have potential applications for evaluating glial-targeted restorative therapies.

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  2. Advancing Precision Medicine: Algebraic Topology and Differential Geometry in Radiology and Computational Pathology (2024)

    Richard M. Levenson, Yashbir Singh, Bastian Rieck, Ashok Choudhary, Gunnar Carlsson, Deepa Sarkar, Quincy A. Hathaway, Colleen Farrelly, Jennifer Rozenblit, Prateek Prasanna, Bradley Erickson
    Abstract Precision medicine aims to provide personalized care based on individual patient characteristics, rather than guideline-directed therapies for groups of diseases or patient demographics. Images—both radiology- and pathology-derived—are a major source of information on presence, type, and status of disease. Exploring the mathematical relationship of pixels in medical imaging (“radiomics”) and cellular-scale structures in digital pathology slides (“pathomics”) offers powerful tools for extracting both qualitative and, increasingly, quantitative data. These analytical approaches, however, may be significantly enhanced by applying additional methods arising from fields of mathematics such as differential geometry and algebraic topology that remain underexplored in this context. Geometry’s strength lies in its ability to provide precise local measurements, such as curvature, that can be crucial for identifying abnormalities at multiple spatial levels. These measurements can augment the quantitative features extracted in conventional radiomics, leading to more nuanced diagnostics. By contrast, topology serves as a robust shape descriptor, capturing essential features such as connected components and holes. The field of topological data analysis was initially founded to explore the shape of data, with functional network connectivity in the brain being a prominent example. Increasingly, its tools are now being used to explore organizational patterns of physical structures in medical images and digitized pathology slides. By leveraging tools from both differential geometry and algebraic topology, researchers and clinicians may be able to obtain a more comprehensive, multi-layered understanding of medical images and contribute to precision medicine’s armamentarium