Use of Volumetric MRI to Characterize Treatment Effect & Phenotype in a Transgenic Mouse Model of Tau Pathology

Sangeetha Somayajula¹, Belma Dogdas¹, Xiaohai Wang², Mansuo Hayashi², Shubing Wang³, Sofia Apreleva³, Richard Baumgartner³, Denise Welsh⁴, Xiangjung Meng⁴, Diane Posavec⁴, Amy Vanko⁴, Jacquelynn Cook⁴, Donald S. Williams⁴, Alexandre Coimbra⁴

We study the use of volumetric MRI (vMRI) for characterization of longitudinal changes, response to therapy, and relationship between vMRI measurements and post-mortem biochemical measurements, in the rTg4510 transgenic mouse model for Alzheimer's disease. We use a low resolution (0.2 mm isotropic), high throughput imaging sequence and automated atlas based segmentation to measure volumes of regions of interest (ROIs) over time and across groups (positive and negative controls, and test compound). The data acquisition and analysis is sensitive to positive control therapy and also highlight specific brain ROIs that respond to therapy and show high correlation with biochemical phenotype.