“One of the holy grails of this business is figuring out how to create a better neuroprosthetic device that is compatible with tissue and lasts longer. What makes this difficult is that brain tissue is, indisputably, the most complex tissue that we know of,” Roysam said.

“Open source is an effective and efficient way to collaborate,” he said. “It can potentially lead to better software, because it continually benefits from peer review. We can leverage other people’s work, and other people can use our software as a launching pad for new innovations.”

Looking for associations between multiple sets of highly complex data requires massive computing power, and Roysam said the new research project will leverage Rensselaer’s newly established Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI).

The supercomputer will significantly trim the time it takes the research team to develop FARSIGHT and assemble a new 3-D map of the brain.

“We would like to be able to map the whole brain in more detail than ever before,” he said. “This requires massive amounts of data that would have previously taken far too long to process. But with CCNI, we can do things that we couldn’t even think about doing before.”

Along with Roysam, researchers working on the project include William Shain of the New York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center; Sally Temple, adjunct professor of biomedical engineering at Rensselaer; professor Kevin Eliceiri from the University of Wisconsin; William Schroeder of the Clifton Park, N.Y., software firm Kitware Inc.; and tumor biologist Rakesh Jain from Harvard Medical School at Massachusetts General Hospital. Roysam said his team of graduate students, undergraduates, and postdoctoral researchers also continue to make important contributions toward the FARSIGHT project.