About the SAWG

About the SAWG

The SPARC Anatomy Working Group, SAWG, is a group of anatomical experts working together to provide the expertise and independent review of anatomical terminology used within the SPARC project. The Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions (SPARC) program is a collaborative effort by the National Institutes of Health to uncover the neural circuitry responsible for visceral control in higher vertebrates and use this knowledge to discover neuromodulation devices to improve organ function.

The SAWG provides community-supported leadership and arbitration on the accepted relationship between anatomical label and definition (and, by extension, the relationship). Parts of this arbitration are to:

• Recommend and reconcile different topographical atlases that capture labeled regions within a coordinate system for some organ;

• Moderate and review the SPARC Term Request pipeline to ensure that consistent terms are used amongst all SPARC data and external references. Currently, anatomical labels/terms are submitted via:

• The team at MBF Biosciences.  The MBF TissueMapper software draws on the SPARC vocabularies to annotate and segment 2D and 3D imaging data.  If a term is not present in the SPARC vocabularies, anatomical terms are requested from MBF on behalf of SPARC investigators.

• Modelers who are developing circuit diagrams of peripheral connectivity using the ApiNATOMY platform;

• Engineers at the University of Auckland Bioinformatics Institute (ABI) developing 3D scaffolds used for spatial registration of SPARC data;

• Directly by SPARC investigators to align anatomical terms used in their SPARC datasets with other SPARC investigators.

This site provides access to the data generated by the SAWG, which includes links to documentation about SAWG members, vocabulary services, term request and connectivity. This page will be continuously updated.