Papers › A graphical, scalable and intuitive method for the placement and the connection of...

A graphical, scalable and intuitive method for the placement and the connection of biological cells

14 Oct 2017arXiv:1710.05189archive 2025-07-28

Nicolas P. Rougier

We introduce a graphical method originating from the computer graphics domain that is used for the arbitrary and intuitive placement of cells over a two-dimensional manifold. Using a bitmap image as input, where the color indicates the identity of the different structures and the alpha channel indicates the local cell density, this method guarantees a discrete distribution of cell position respecting the local density function. This method scales to any number of cells, allows to specify several different structures at once with arbitrary shapes and provides a scalable and versatile alternative to the more classical assumption of a uniform non-spatial distribution. Furthermore, several connection schemes can be derived from the paired distances between cells using either an automatic mapping or a user-defined local reference frame, providing new computational properties for the underlying model. The method is illustrated on a discrete homogeneous neural field, on the distribution of cones and rods in the retina and on a coronal view of the basal ganglia.

PaperPDFCode

Code

rougier/spatial-computation officialmentioned in papermentioned on GitHub report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections