Hello, I’m Blaine Weiss.
I am a graduate student at the University of Kentucky and a researcher at the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging. My work focuses on awake intravital fluorescence microscopy, mouse models of dementia, astrocyte calcium signaling, vascular dynamics, and the development of computational tools for extracting biological meaning from complex imaging datasets.
My goal is to build analysis systems that make difficult brain imaging experiments more quantitative, reproducible, and visually interpretable.
Research Focus
My research centers on understanding how cellular activity and cerebrovascular dynamics interact in the living brain, particularly in the context of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease-related pathology.
Using awake intravital microscopy, I study activity patterns across astrocyte somata, processes, and perivascular endfeet while simultaneously examining vascular responses such as dilation and constriction. These datasets are rich, dynamic, and difficult to analyze with conventional tools, which led me to build custom software for event detection, segmentation, synchronization analysis, and vascular-cell coupling.
STONE
Spatial & Temporal Observation of Network Events
STONE is designed for functional imaging analysis of cellular activity. It includes tools for activity-based cell detection, filtering, event detection, waveform extraction, and network-level synchrony analysis.
- Activity-informed ROI detection
- Subcellular signal extraction
- Calcium event detection
- Network synchrony and correlation analysis
- Export workflows for reproducible downstream analysis
LAVA
Localized Analysis of Vascular Astrocytes
LAVA was developed to compare stimulation-induced vascular motion with local perivascular cellular signaling. It was named for its original use case: measuring astrocyte endfoot activity around cerebral arterioles.
- Vessel-associated ROI analysis
- Perivascular astrocyte/endfoot signal quantification
- Dilation and constriction tracking
- Event-locked vascular-cell comparisons
- Multimodal image/signal integration
Why this matters
Awake fluorescence imaging produces data that are spatially complex, temporally dynamic, and biologically heterogeneous. Manual analysis is often slow, subjective, and difficult to reproduce.
My computational work aims to bridge this gap by creating tools that can detect biologically meaningful activity patterns, compare cellular signaling with vascular behavior, quantify network-level dynamics, preserve metadata and analysis provenance, and generate figure-ready outputs for publication and collaboration.
Research Themes
Awake Intravital Microscopy
Imaging brain activity in awake mouse models to capture cellular and vascular dynamics under more physiologically relevant conditions.
Astrocyte-Vascular Coupling
Quantifying how astrocyte compartments, especially perivascular endfeet, relate to nearby arteriole motion and stimulation-induced vascular responses.
Dementia Models
Applying advanced imaging and analysis tools to mouse models relevant to Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegenerative pathology.
Functional Signal Analysis
Developing pipelines for fluorescence signal processing, event detection, filtering, synchronization, and network-level activity mapping.
Software Development
Building MATLAB-based tools that streamline complex imaging analyses and improve reproducibility across experiments.
Data Visualization
Creating visual and quantitative summaries of cellular activity, vascular motion, network structure, and compartment-specific signaling.
Publications & Scientific Output
My work includes peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, poster awards, and computational tools related to neurodegeneration, brain imaging, and functional analysis.
Publications
Add selected first-author and co-author publications here.
Weiss et al. Title of publication. Journal Name. Year.
Posters & Presentations
Add selected conference posters, talks, and scientific presentations here.
- Markesbery Symposium
- AAIC
- Neuroscience meetings
- University research events
Recognition
Add awards, fellowships, cover art, poster awards, or invited presentation highlights here.
Featured Visuals
Awake Imaging Movie
Short description of what this movie shows.
Activity Detection
Short description of segmentation, ROI detection, or calcium activity extraction.
Vascular-Cell Coupling
Short description of arteriole motion and perivascular astrocyte signaling.
STONE-LAVA Under Construction
STONE-LAVA is currently being developed as a unified analysis environment for multimodal fluorescence imaging datasets.
- Improved event detection workflows
- Metadata-aware export formats
- Multichannel imaging compatibility
- Vascular-cell coupling modules
- Reproducible analysis outputs
- Publication-ready visualization tools
Interested in collaboration?
I am interested in projects involving awake brain imaging, astrocyte biology, neurovascular coupling, Alzheimer’s disease models, image analysis, and computational tool development.