arXiv:2607.23183cs.CEcs.CV2026-07

用自适应尺度的视觉模型,把蠕虫神经形态与行为关联,提升神经毒性评估效率。

A Scale-adaptive Vision Model Links C. elegans Neuronal Morphology to Behavior for Neurotoxicity Assessment

论文配图:A Scale-adaptive Vision Model Links C. elegans Neuronal Morphology to Behavior for Neurotoxicity Assessment
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 设计可自适应多尺度的图像建模方法,突破传统网格限制,精准捕捉神经病变特征。
  • 在27,117张图像上训练,实现对神经元形态的高精度分类、分割与检测,优于通用模型。
  • 首次发现苯并咪唑基团是导致多巴胺神经毒性的关键因素,适合药物筛选与环境毒理研究。

神经系统疾病是全球致残的主要原因,且日益与环境化学暴露相关。然而,神经毒性评估仍依赖主观的人工形态评分,难以预测行为结果。秀丽隐杆线虫(C. elegans)提供了一种基因可操作、符合3R原则的替代模型,但大规模从共聚焦显微图像中量化神经表型仍面临计算挑战:现有视觉基础模型基于自然或医学影像训练,无法有效解析神经成像中稀疏信号与多尺度病灶。本文提出专用于C. elegans多巴胺能神经元的自监督视觉模型,并构建了包含27,117张标注图像的多粒度共聚焦基准数据集CeNeuMorph。相较于标准掩码自编码器,我们引入一种自适应尺度的掩码图像建模策略,在固定令牌预算下联合学习跨分辨率与补丁大小的表征。通过解耦结构语义学习与刚性网格约束,该模型能在可计算框架内有效识别从细小树突珠状化到胞体显著萎缩的全谱神经退行性病变。最终,该模型在分类、分割与检测任务上均超越通用及生物医学基础模型。融合视觉特征与形态描述符,成功预测多巴胺依赖性行为缺陷($R^2=0.498$)。对180种农用化学品筛查发现,苯并咪唑基团是此前未被识别的多巴胺能神经毒性决定因子。本工作展示了自适应尺度自监督学习如何连接形态与功能,为神经毒性评估和药物发现提供可扩展的非哺乳动物替代方案。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Neurological disorders are a leading cause of global disability and are increasingly linked to environmental chemical exposures. Yet neurotoxicity assessment still relies on hand-scored morphological readouts that are subjective and poorly predictive of behavioral outcomes. Caenorhabditis elegans provides a genetically tractable, 3R-compliant alternative, but quantifying neuronal phenotypes from confocal microscopy at scale remains computationally challenging: existing vision foundation models, trained on natural or radiological images, cannot resolve the sparse signals and multi-scale lesions of neuronal imaging. Here, we introduce a dedicated self-supervised vision model for C. elegans dopaminergic neurons, together with CeNeuMorph, a multi-grained confocal benchmark of 27,117 annotated images. Specifically, moving beyond standard Masked Autoencoders, we propose a scale-adaptive masked image modeling strategy that jointly learns representations across resolutions and patch sizes under a fixed token budget. By decoupling structural semantic learning from rigid grid constraints, the model effectively resolves the full spectrum of neurodegenerative lesions - ranging from fine dendritic beading to gross soma shrinkage - within a tractable computational framework. Finally, our model surpasses both generalist and biomedical foundation models across classification, segmentation and detection tasks. Fusing visual features with morphological descriptors enables prediction of dopamine-dependent behavioral deficits ($R^2=0.498$). Screening 180 agrochemicals, we identify the benzimidazole moiety as a previously unrecognized determinant of dopaminergic neurotoxicity. Together, the work demonstrates how scale-adaptive self-supervised learning can connect morphology to function for a scalable alternative to mammalian in vivo models for neurotoxicity assessment and drug discovery.

神经毒理自监督学习线虫模型图像分析

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