%0 Journal Article
%T Anatomical MRI templates of tree shrew brain for volumetric analysis and voxel-based morphometry.
%A Wang S
%A Shan D
%A Dai J
%A Niu H
%A Ma Y
%A Lin F
%A Lei H
%J J Neurosci Methods
%V 220
%N 1
%D Oct 2013 30
%M 24012828
%F 2.987
%R 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2013.08.023
%X BACKGROUND: Tree shrews are close relatives of primates, and are increasingly used as models in the research of vision, social stress and neurological/psychiatric diseases. However, neuroimaging techniques, for example magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, are only rarely applied to this species to study the structure and function of the brain. A template MR image set, which is essential for morphometry/volumetric analysis, of tree shrew brain has been lacking in the literature.
METHODS: High-resolution anatomical MR images and diffusion tensor images of the brain were acquired from male Chinese tree shrews (Tupaia belangeri chinensis), and resampled to an isotropic resolution of 200 μm × 200 μm × 200 μm. Population-based image templates of tree shrew brain, including gray matter/white matter/cerebrospinal fluid probability maps and a fractional anisotropy template, were constructed at this spatial resolution, all in a reference space. Digital masks of representative anatomical structures, including hippocampus, amygdala and cingulum bundle, were created.
RESULTS: With the templates constructed, the volumes of bilateral hippocampus and amygdala were measured using a template-facilitated semi-automated approach to be 59.8 ± 8.3 and 64.3 ± 3.4 mm(3), respectively.
CONCLUSIONS: For the first time, high-resolution MR image templates of tree shrew brain were reported. The average volume of bilateral hippocampus measured with the template-facilitated semi-automated approach was found to be similar to the result obtained by the much more labor-intensive manual approach.
CONCLUSIONS: The MR image templates obtained in this study are useful for analyzing neuroimage data of tree shrew brain. The templates are freely available to the scientific community upon request.