Calcium transient detection and segmentation with the astronomically motivated algorithm for background estimation and transient segmentation (Astro-BEATS)
Journal:
bioRxiv
Published Date:
Mar 17, 2026
Abstract
Fluorescence-based calcium-imaging is a powerful tool for studying localized neuronal activity, including miniature Synaptic Calcium Transients, providing real-time insights into synaptic activity. These transients induce only subtle changes in the fluorescence signal, often barely above baseline, which poses a significant challenge for automated synaptic transient detection and segmentation. Detecting astronomical transients similarly requires efficient algorithms that will remain robust over a large field of view with varying noise properties. We leverage techniques used in astronomical transient detection for miniature Synaptic Calcium Transient detection in fluorescence microscopy. We present Astro-BEATS, an automatic miniature Synaptic Calcium Transient segmentation algorithm that incorporates image estimation and source-finding techniques used in astronomy and designed for calcium-imaging videos. Astro-BEATS outperforms current threshold-based approaches for synaptic calcium transient detection and segmentation. The produced segmentation masks can be used to train a supervised deep learning algorithm for improved synaptic calcium transient detection in calcium-imaging data. The speed of Astro-BEATS and its applicability to previously unseen datasets without re-optimization makes it particularly useful for generating training datasets for deep learning-based approaches.
