FANC CATMAID Data Viewer

Access

The FANC CATMAID instance is hosted and maintained by Virtual Fly Brain (VFB) as part of their mission to integrate and preserve key Drosophila neuroscience datasets. The instance provides two views of the data:

1. Original EM stack and tracings (Project ID 1): https://fanc.catmaid.virtualflybrain.org/

2. Neurons aligned to JRC2018 VNC female template (Project ID 2): https://fanc.catmaid.virtualflybrain.org/

This resource provides access to both the original FANC dataset and template-aligned reconstructions. Virtual Fly Brain ensures its long-term availability to the research community.

Source Publication

The data is from the research published in:

Phelps JS, Hildebrand DGC, Graham BJ, et al. (2021) Reconstruction of motor control circuits in adult Drosophila using automated transmission electron microscopy. Cell, 184(3), 759-774.e18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.12.013

see: https://www.lee.hms.harvard.edu/resources

Dataset Contents

The viewer provides access to:

• Complete electron microscopy volume of an adult female Drosophila ventral nerve cord
• Manually traced neuron reconstructions in original EM space
• Template-aligned neurons in JRC2018 VNC female template space
• Synaptic connectivity information
• Associated metadata and annotations

Features

This CATMAID instance enables:

• Browser-based visualization of the serial section electron microscopy data
• Navigation through image stacks
• Viewing of neuron reconstructions in both original and template space
• Analysis of synaptic connectivity
• Data export functionality

Available Tools

• Tracing tool for examining reconstructions
• Neuron search interface
• Connectivity analysis tools
• Skeleton visualization options
• API access for programmatic data retrieval (documentation: https://catmaid.readthedocs.io/en/stable/api.html): https://fanc.catmaid.virtualflybrain.org/apis/

Public API token

Read-only access to this instance is open to everyone, but most of CATMAID’s query endpoints are POST rather than GET, and POST requests are subject to a CSRF check. Command-line and server-side clients (pymaid, curl, scripts) can satisfy that check by requesting a page first and replaying the cookie they are given. Code running in a browser cannot: it can neither read a cookie belonging to another site nor set a Referer header. Browser-based tools should therefore authenticate as the anonymous user, using this token:

7ebf1358497a96845d6aa7b4d0fbd01538fb69c2

This token is published deliberately and is not a secret. It authenticates as AnonymousUser, whose only permission on this project is can_browse, so it grants exactly the read access this page already offers to everyone and nothing further. Write requests made with it are refused by the server.

Send it in either the X-Authorization or the Authorization header:

curl -X POST https://fanc.catmaid.virtualflybrain.org/1/skeleton/neuronnames \
  -H "X-Authorization: Token 7ebf1358497a96845d6aa7b4d0fbd01538fb69c2" \
  --data "skids[0]=16"

Note: Both views (original and aligned) can be accessed through the same API using different project IDs (pid).

Citation Guidelines

When using this data, please cite:

1. The FANC dataset: Phelps JS, Hildebrand DGC, Graham BJ, et al. (2021) Reconstruction of motor control circuits in adult Drosophila using automated transmission electron microscopy. Cell, 184(3), 759-774.e18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.12.013

2. The CATMAID platform: Saalfeld S, Cardona A, Hartenstein V, Tomančák P (2009) CATMAID: collaborative annotation toolkit for massive amounts of image data. Bioinformatics 25(15): 1984-1986. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btp266

Maintenance & Support

This resource is archived, hosted, and maintained by Virtual Fly Brain (VFB - https://virtualflybrain.org) as part of their commitment to preserving and making accessible critical Drosophila neuroscience data resources. The aligned neurons are also available through the Virtual Fly Brain website.