Section: Overall Objectives

Overall Objectives

Morpheme is a joint project between Inria, CNRS and the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, involving the Computer Science, Signals and Systems Laboratory (I3S) (UMR 6070) and the Institute for Biology of Valrose (iBV) (CNRS/INSERM).

The scientific objectives of MORPHEME are to characterize and model the development and the morphological properties of biological structures from the cell to the supra-cellular scale. Being at the interface between computational science and biology, we plan to understand the morphological changes that occur during development combining in vivo imaging, image processing and computational modeling.

The morphology and topology of mesoscopic structures, indeed, do have a key influence on the functional behavior of organs. Our goal is to characterize different populations or development conditions based on the shape of cellular and supra-cellular structures, including micro-vascular networks and dendrite/axon networks. Using microscopy or tomography images, we plan to extract quantitative parameters to characterize morphometry over time and in different samples. We will then statistically analyze shapes and complex structures to identify relevant markers and define classification tools. Finally, we will propose models explaining the temporal evolution of the observed samples. With this, we hope to better understand the development of normal tissues, but also characterize at the supra-cellular level different pathologies such as the Fragile X Syndrome, Alzheimer or diabetes.