Statistical groupwise comparison of spatial point patterns in biological imaging

Elucidating how cerebral structures are organized in space is an important step towards the understanding of brain functioning. We address here the problem of comparing the three-dimensional arrangement of cell populations. Our approach is based on cell intensity maps computed from repeated data that allow to reveal the way populations are organized in space, and we propose a strategy for the statistical comparison of such maps. Our method was evaluated using simulated data and was applied to the analysis of the relative spatial arrangement of interneuron populations within the rat striatum.