  This article describes the investigation of morphological variations among
two set of neuronal cells, namely a control group of wild type rat cells and a
group of cells of a trangenic line. Special attention is given to sigular
points in the neuronal structure, namely the branching points and extremities
of the dendritic processes. The characterization of the spatial distribution of
such points is obtained by using a recently reported morphological technique
based on forced percolation and window-size compensation, which is particularly
suited to the analysis of scattered points presenting several coexisting
densities. Different dispersions were identified in our statistical analysis,
suggesting that the transgenic line of neurons is characterized by a more
pronounced morphological variation. A classification scheme based on a
canonical discriminant function was also considered in order to identify the
morphological differences.
