ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neuroinform.
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fninf.2025.1628538
A Correlation-Based Tool for Quantifying Membrane Periodic Skeleton Associated Periodicity
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The advent of super-resolution microscopy revealed the membrane periodic skeleton (MPS), a specialized neuronal cytoskeletal structure with a periodic arrangement of actin rings spaced 190 nm apart by two spectrin dimers. While research over the last decade has provided critical insights into the ion channels, cell adhesion, and signaling molecules associated with the MPS, tools for accurately and unbiasedly quantifying their periodic localizations have remained limited. We here developed Napari-WaveBreaker (github.com/SamKVs/napari-k2-WaveBreaker), an open-source tool that enables quantification of MPS periodicity using autocorrelation as well as periodic codistribution using cross-correlation. Validated with both simulated and STED microscopy images of periodic and non-periodic axonal proteins, the output parameters accurately reflected the visual periodicity of images as well as the spatial shift between two periodic targets. In conclusion, Napari-WaveBreaker enables the unbiased quantitative analysis of MPS-associated periodicity and its changes.
Keywords: membrane-associated periodic skeleton, super-resolution microscopy, autocorrelation, cross-correlation, axon initial segment, napari, Software
Received: 14 May 2025; Accepted: 29 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Vanspauwen, Luque-Fernández and Rasmussen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hanne Borger Rasmussen, Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.