BSSE: An open-source image processing tool for miniaturized microscopy

Single-photon-excitation-based miniaturized microscope, or miniscope, has recently emerged as a powerful tool for imaging neural ensemble activities in freely moving animals. In the meanwhile, this highly flexible and implantable technology promises great potential for studying a broad range of cells, tissues and organs. To date, however, applications have been largely limited by the properties of the imaging modality. It is therefore highly desirable for a method generally applicable for processing miniscopy images, enabling and extending the applications to diverse anatomical and functional traits, spanning various cell types in the brain and other organs. We report an image processing approach, termed BSSE, for background suppression and signal enhancement for miniscope image processing. The BSSE method provides a simple, automatic solution to the intrinsic challenges of overlapping signals, high background and artifacts in miniscopy images. We validated the method by imaging synthetic structures and various biological samples of brain, tumor, and kidney tissues. The work represents a generally applicable tool for miniscopy technology, suggesting broader applications of the miniaturized, implantable and flexible technology for biomedical research.