Table 1.

Algorithm for recursive splitting of synapse clumps

STEP 1	Perform maximum intensity projection of the detected 3D synapse object.
STEP 2	Obtain the contour points of the synapse cluster.
STEP 3	Calculate the concavity score of the contour points based on Eq. (2).
STEP 4	Choose a detected marker (denoted M1) from the markers pool P, whose sum distance from the rest of the markers is maximum.
STEP 5	Split M1 from the rest of the markers. Start from the highest concavity point, A, look for a point B so that segment AB splits marker M1 from the rest N-1 markers. If no such segment was found, move to the contour point with next highest concavity and repeat until a good split is found. When multiple segments AB were found, the optimal pair that maximizes Eq. (1) us used.
STEP 6	Assign new identity to voxels of the newly split synapse for quantification statistics.
STEP 7	REPEAT STEP 4, until P only has one marker left.