Creating a Skeleton Analysis Plugin

Skeleton analysis is a field of image morphology that involves measuring properties of skeletons, or single-pixel-thin networks of connected pixels. It has many uses in biological research, including the study of neuronal shape, blood vessel networks, cytoskeletal networks, mitochondrial networks, bone microstructure, and more.

This team has developed skan, a skeleton analysis library in Python, to enable analysis directly in Python. The project will design visualizations using napari layers for skan’s pixel and branch graphs. The group will also add the ability to interactively edit skeleton images and skeleton objects within napari using the plugin.

Since skeletonization is a procedure that is very sensitive to noise, skeleton analysis is a field that could dramatically benefit from the addition of visual inspection and manual editing provided by this plugin.