title: Characterizing spatial distributions of astrocytes in the mammalian retina.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  In addition to being involved in retinal vascular growth, astrocytes play an important role in diseases and injuries, such as glaucomatous neuro-degeneration and retinal detachment. Studying astrocytes, their morphological cell characteristics and their spatial relationships to the surrounding vasculature in the retina may elucidate their role in these conditions.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Our results show that in normal healthy retinas, the distribution of observed astrocyte cells does not follow a uniform distribution. The cells are significantly more densely packed around the blood vessels than a uniform distribution would predict. We also show that compared with the distribution of all cells, large cells are more dense in the vicinity of veins and toward the optic nerve head whereas smaller cells are often more dense in the vicinity of arteries. We hypothesize that since veinal astrocytes are known to transport toxic metabolic waste away from neurons they may be more critical than arterial astrocytes and therefore require larger cell bodies to process waste more efficiently.
  
  
  METHODS
  A 1/8th size down-sampled version of the seven retinal image mosaics described in this article can be found on BISQUE (Kvilekval et al., 2010) at http://bisque.ece.ucsb.edu/client_service/view?resource=http://bisque.ece.ucsb.edu/data_service/dataset/6566968.
authors: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Neuroscience Research Institute and Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
authors: Aruna
authors: A
authors: Jammalamadaka
authors: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Neuroscience Research Institute and Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
authors: Panuakdet
authors: P
authors: Suwannatat
authors: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Neuroscience Research Institute and Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Neuroscience Research Institute and Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
authors: Steven K
authors: SK
authors: Fisher
authors: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Neuroscience Research Institute and Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
authors: B S
authors: BS
authors: Manjunath
authors: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Neuroscience Research Institute and Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
authors: Tobias
authors: T
authors: Höllerer
authors: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Neuroscience Research Institute and Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
authors: Gabriel
authors: G
authors: Luna
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001253:Astrocytes / Q000166:cytology*; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D051379:Mice; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology*; D012160:Retina / Q000166:cytology*