Integración de datos de imagen molecular y expresión génica

As far as all the background information about atlases and gene expression databases has already been analysed, now we need to define further the project, its objectives and facts of interest. Gene expression databases, in most cases, do not provide any kind of integration with anatomical information of where those genes are expressed. The characterization of the whole transcriptome for structures like the brain is of limited utility if we have no anatomical information. Combining the databases with the anatomical information provided by an anatomical atlas, we can have lots of advantages. First of all, the most immediate advantage that such integration would introduce would be user-friendliness. Part of this problem is solved with the aGEM tool already developed, that integrates different databases into a single user interface.Visual representation of the gene locations would improve user experience if it is integrated with aGEM. As a second advantage, this integration could facilitate the connection between imaging and gene expression information when defining or analysing results from preclinical experiments. The definition of an imaging protocol in order to study the phenotype of a transgenic animal model could benefit from the results of this project, since the researcher could look for anatomical structures related to the genes that have been manipulated. The results of image quantification are usually an statistical parametric map, that presents the statistical significance of a certain analysis for every voxel. Significant areas from this image could be related to the underlying genes by means of the proposed integration tool. So, the main objective of the project is to connect all the information provided by aGEM and by the atlas. For the issue, it is needed to find how the information is stored and related in aGEM, in order to extract enough information of interest to program a first version of the tool. Also, it is required to study which atlases are available and which one is the most suitable for our purposes. Once all these steps have been done, the kind of program which is going to be developed needs to be analysed. There are several possibilities, like a program in Java, C++, Matlab or a plugin for its integration in ImageJ. Once all the necessary information is extracted, an integration step must be done for the program to be operative. Then, when the information mapping is ready, the interface of the program can be written. The first version of program should be able to perform certain query types: 1. Anatomy query: Given a list of anatomy structures, the user should be able to select any of them and the program would launch a query showing the genes and their information expressed in the structure, which would be shown in the atlas images. 2. Gene query: The user selects a gene and the program would detect in which structures is the gene expressed and show them in the atlas images. The purpose in a first stage is to integrate part of the information contained in aGEM in a beta trial version of the interface, in order to check its real utility.Ingeniería Biomédic