Abstract #0741

Diffusion Tensor Imaging and Micro-Computed Tomography Based Three Dimensional Stereotaxic Atlas of the Adult C57BL/6J Mouse Brain Corrected for Postmortem Tissue Deformation

Manisha Aggarwal¹, Jiangyang Zhang², Michael I. Miller^1,3, Susumu Mori^2,4

¹Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA; ²Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA; ³Center of Imaging Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA; ⁴F. M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA

A microCT and DTI based three dimensional stereotaxic atlas of the adult C57BL/6J mouse brain was developed, with correction of postmortem tissue distortion due to specimen fixation. A population-averaged in vivo MRI brain template was developed with estimates of anatomical variability, and was used as the reference for nonlinear deformation of the ex vivo data, to generate a distortion-corrected DTI atlas with high anatomical fidelity. The distortion-corrected DTI atlas was incorporated into the stereotaxic coordinate frame. Compared to existing histology based atlases, the distortion corrected microCT-DTI atlas provides a more accurate representation of the adult C57BL/6J brain anatomy.