Reinforcing neuron extraction and spike inference in calcium imaging using deep self-supervised learning

Abstract

Calcium imaging is inherently susceptible to detection noise especially when imaging with high frame rate or under low excitation dosage. We developed DeepCAD, a self-supervised learning method for spatiotemporal enhancement of calcium imaging without requiring any high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) observations. Using this method, detection noise can be effectively suppressed and the imaging SNR can be improved more than tenfold, which massively improves the accuracy of neuron extraction and spike inference and facilitate the functional analysis of neural circuits.