The DIADEM automated neuronal reconstruction contest has finished. Accurate, fast, and high-resolution automated neuron reconstruction is of vital importance to cracking the mystery of how neural circuits perform. Even with perfect knowledge of the firing patterns of every cell in a circuit, our understanding of how these patterns are produced and how the information is processed would be quite limited. True understanding requires knowledge of the precise wiring diagram. This prize is a good first step towards bringing awareness of this tricky problem to the world’s best computer scientists.
$75,000 in prize money was to go to the group that was able to produce high-quality reconstructions of neuronal structures at least 20x faster than by-hand reconstructions. In the finals, the fastest speed achieved was 10X the by-hand method. Some groups were hindered by slight variances in the source data formatting, which normally isn’t a big deal unless you only have 20 minutes to produce as much reconstruction as possible…
Since no group was able to beat the hard floor, but substantial progress was made, the money was distributed amongst these finalists.
Badrinath Roysam Team, $25,000
“for the better overall generality of their program in producing robust reconstructions by integration of human and machines interactions.”
Armen Stepanyants Team, $25,000
“for the better overall biological results in the spirit of pure automation.”
Eugene Myers Team, $15,000
“for the excellent quality and strength of their algorithm.”
German Gonzalez Team, $10,000
“for their deeper potential, more original approach, and ultimate scalability of their proposed solution.”
Deniz Erdogmus Team
“for elevating themselves above the current state of automated reconstructions…with a deep understanding of the technical and scientific problems.”
Congrats to the placing teams.
Brain Windows 
Congratulations to the winners!
So how do we get access to the winning code?