Manisha Aggarwal1, Xin Ye2, Jeremy Nathans2,3, Michael I. Miller1,4, Susumu Mori5, Jiangyang Zhang5
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA; 2Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA; 3Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA; 4Center of Imaging Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA; 5Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
Population-based quantitative analyses of DTI data was used to characterize phenotypic changes during development in the Frizzled-4 knockout (Fz4-/-) mutant mouse brain. Population-averaged anisotropy indices computed from normalized diffusion tensor fields for wild type and Fz4-/- mouse brains at postnatal day 7 (P7), P14, P21 and P30 were used to investigate the developmental abnormalities at each stage. DTI results indicated progressive disorganization of the cerebellar cellular architecture, consistent with previous histological findings, and revealed developmental anomalies characterized by differences in diffusion anisotropy in the dentate gyrus, olfactory bulb and several axonal tracts.