Send a Brain

This early-stage neuroscience initiative, based at the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen, aims to make brain circuit mapping faster and more accessible to researchers. Its proposed service would turn brain tissue into detailed 3D molecular maps and quantitative analyses delivered through the cloud, without requiring customers to own an expensive microscope. The approach combines physical tissue expansion and fluorescent labeling with large-scale light-sheet fluorescence microscopy. Machine-learning tools are intended to detect and map synapses, producing circuit-level measures of how neural connections are organized.

The project seeks to address the cost and time involved in electron-microscopy-based reconstruction, which can demand extensive imaging, computation, and manual proofreading. Its current proof-of-concept goal is to validate the complete pipeline on a Drosophila brain, including tissue preparation, imaging, and data processing. Planned technical work includes support for large datasets, computational pipelines, 3D web viewers, cloud infrastructure, and APIs. The initiative is also inviting collaborators in computer science, cloud engineering, and machine learning to help develop and test the platform.