MRI/DTI Atlas of the Rat Brain

Book excerpt: MRI/DTI Atlas of the Rat Brain offers two major enhancements when compared with earlier attempts to make MRI/DTI rat brain atlases. First, the spatial resolution at 25μm is considerably higher than previous data published. Secondly, the comprehensive set of MRI/DTI contrasts provided has enabled the authors to identify more than 80% of structures identified in The Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates. - Ninety-six coronal levels from the olfactory bulb to the pyramidal decussation are depicted - Delineations primarily made on the basis of direct observations on the MRI contrasts - Each of the 96 open book pages displays four items— top left, the directionally colored fractional anisotropy image derived from DTI (DTI - FAC); top right, the diffusion-weighted image (DWI); bottom left, the gradient recalled echo (GRE); and bottom right, a diagrammatic synthesis of the information derived from these three images plus two additional images, which are not displayed (ARDC and RD). This is repeated for 96 coronal levels, which makes the levels 250 μm apart - The FAC images are shown in full color - The orientation of sections corresponds to that in Paxinos and Watson's The Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates, 7th Edition (2014) - The images have been obtained from 3D isotropic population averages (number of rats=5). All abbreviations of structure names are identical to the Paxinos & Watson histologic atlas