Our Admin Team has been quite stretched for a while as our seasoned catchers can appreciate. They have been working hard to implement a new multi-functional platform to accommodate additional future projects and enhancements for Stall Catchers while tending to necessary workshops and seeking support for on-going activities and needed resources.
Three days ago, Pietro responded to an inquiry from CatchME! in the chat box; providing some very exciting information. Since information in the chat soon loses visibility, the essence of Pietroās update follows so that others have the opportunity to see it. This might become a regular feature in the forum. Meanwhile, hereās the news from Pietro:
Exciting news! We are working with Boston University to see if we can use Stall Catchers to examine capillary stalling not only in Alzheimerās patients, but also in stroke patients! We hope to have some pilot data to share with you soon. Check for more details soon in the blog at blog.hcinst.org. We will, of course, continue to analyze data from the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab to accelerate the Alzheimerās research (in case there was any doubt).
In case you missed it in the chat box, four days ago Pietro and company were at the Schaffer-Nishimura lab āmeeting with a new cadre of undergraduate researchers who are preparing new data for Stall Catchers.ā They plan to post more info on this in the blog āsoon,ā so be sure to check there now and then for updates.
OK, Iāve been informed that after a brief outage, the Forum has been updated and came back online August 10th.
Our fearless leader, Pietro, discovered that while Blog posts were supposed to be visible in the Forum, they had previously gone into a āhidden section,ā which was why none of us could see them there (here).
So, from now on, anyone visiting this Forum will also be able to see the latest Blog postings as well. Just look for the big green āB.ā (Except itās a circle, not a square. Doinā the best I can. )
Why we were (twice) stuck at 99.1% on the blue verification status bar. (My non-expert summary of Pietroās explanation below was posted in the chat box yesterday.)
From Pietro: āIt turns out that one of the image stacks from the lab never resulted in generated movies even though 620 ghost records were added to the database. So Stall Catchers thought there were 620 movies that nobody annotated (they all had load errors).ā
Pietro said that he hid those movies to correct the progress bar error and will see about reprocessing the image stack if warranted.
Pietro reports that after several manipulations we have our first pilot dataset with stroke data from Boston University ready to try on Stall Catchers. Expect to see a blog post about it soon. This data set will be a bit different, but we catchers should adapt OK. Pietro will explain in the blog post, but I understand the resolution is only about a fourth what weāre used to, and the frame rate had to be slowed to be the same as our regular movies (so not as smooth). But the main difference is that the vessels are all flattened on top of each other (so no change in depth) which might help in some ways, and maybe confuse in others.
OK, rather than āNews from the Admin Team,ā this is more like āModerator Going Out on a Limbā - in this case to provide some non-expert insight(?) to Gaalecās chat box question. Iām barely competent to provide short replies in the chat, for longer responses as this seemed to merit I need more āroom.ā
Gaalec, asked if we might be seeing and annotating videos of non-mouse (e.g., human or monkey) capillaries in Stall Catchers at some time. Short answer, I donāt know, However, until a true Admin elects to respond, I can at least provide some food for thought.
To get these images from the living mice, they have had little glass-slide āwindowsā implanted in their skulls. (They seem happy with this arrangement and not to know the difference.)
People (and monkeys) would probably notice. Even if they chose to volunteer, I donāt know as that would be acceptable at this point, or even useful, because ā¦
The multiphoton microscopy technique used to get the images only can go - if I recall correctly (which is a big if) - a few millimeters into the mouse brain. A human brain is so much bigger than the mouse brain, weād really only be scratching the surface, literally.
OK, hopefully that feeble attempt at a reply was better than ignoring your question.
You should know, Gaalec, that the team (HCI and Cornell) is alert to other possible opportunities to apply the Stall Catcherās approach elsewhere - not just to the stroke research at Boston U mentioned above in this discussion thread, but perhaps for other maladies in other organs - like the heart, even. The heart capillaries would be tough to image since, unlike the brain, the heartās always on the move (we hope), but those grad students nowadays can be pretty crafty!
Admin noted messages in this morningās chat about site issues. Sounds likely related to the security certificate renewal again. Pietro should have access within 20 minutes and will hopefully get things resolved quickly thereafter.
It (the Chat) seems to be working OK now, CatchME. If you are still having an issue, you can report it directly to info@stallcatchers.com, being sure to include your device info.
Meanwhile, Iāll go ahead and forward the rest of your inquiry to Admin. Iām sure others would appreciate an update as well. If you havenāt already, you can check the Blog for previous research updates, but a fresh posting would be welcome, Iām sure.
First of all, thank you for your tremendous contributions to Stall Catchers. I cannot recall a recent day where I did not see you on the top ten leaderboard.
Iām glad we got the chatbox issue resolved. This happens sometimes when our automated chat filter (instated to keep the community chatter clean) misfires and blocks someone for no good reason. Obviously there was no good reason to block your chat, and we apologize. Indeed, weāve had members of our own development team get similarly blocked!
Regarding a new dataset, we have one! Well, to be honest, itās an old dataset (APOE) for which we are replicating the analysis. We have observed a strange drift in response bias in how vessels get annotated in Stall Catchers - meaning that whereas previously, when uncertain, there was an overall bias toward answering stalls, there now seems to be an overall bias in the other direction. So to ensure that Stall Catchers is providing the very high level of data quality needed by the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab for their ongoing Alzheimerās investigations, we need to replicate the analysis of a past dataset and see whether or not the results are consistent.
In the meantime, we havenāt had any new datasets coming out of the lab because they are retooling their microscopes with more advanced methods that could provide us with much clearer vessel movies in Stall Catchers. Weāll have more on that in a bit.
Thanks for your patience and we will be very curious to solve the mystery of the drifting bias, which will be enabled by the current dataset.
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