Fully-Automated μMRI Morphometric Phenotyping of the Tc1 Mouse Model of Down Syndrome.

ABSTRACT: We describe a fully automated pipeline for the morphometric phenotyping of mouse brains from μMRI data, and show its application to the Tc1 mouse model of Down syndrome, to identify new morphological phenotypes in the brain of this first transchromosomic animal carrying human chromosome 21. We incorporate an accessible approach for simultaneously scanning multiple ex vivo brains, requiring only a 3D-printed brain holder, and novel image processing steps for their separation and orientation. We employ clinically established multi-atlas techniques-superior to single-atlas methods-together with publicly-available atlas databases for automatic skull-stripping and tissue segmentation, providing high-quality, subject-specific tissue maps. We follow these steps with group-wise registration, struc

SUBMITTER: Powell NM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5033246 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature