Abstract
An increasing number of applications use the postnatal piglet model in neuroimaging studies, however, these are based primarily on T1 weighted image templates. There is a growing need for a multimodal structural brain template for a comprehensive depiction of the piglet brain, particularly given the growing applications of diffusion weighted imaging for characterizing tissue microstructures and white matter organization. In this study, we present the first multimodal piglet structural brain template which includes a T1 weighted image with tissue segmentation probability maps, diffusion weighted metric templates with multiple diffusivity maps, and population-based whole-brain fiber tracts for postnatal piglets. These maps provide information about the integrity of white matter that is not available in T1 images alone. The availability of this diffusion weighted metric template will contribute to the structural imaging analysis of the postnatal piglet brain, especially models that are designed for the study of white matter diseases. Furthermore, the population-based whole-brain fiber tracts permit researchers to visualize the white matter connections in the piglet brain across subjects, guiding the delineation of a specific white matter region for structural analysis where current diffusion data is lacking. Researchers are able to augment the tracts by merging tracts from their own data to the population-based fiber tracts and thus improve the confidence of the population-wise fiber distribution.
Highlights
The domestic piglet is a common animal model for translational research in pediatric neuroscience because of its neuroanatomical commonalities with the human brain (Lind et al, 2007; Sauleau et al, 2009; Mendl et al, 2010; Gieling et al, 2011), with respect to the morphological shape of the piglet brain including the gyral and sulcal pattern, and the rapid period of brain growth lastingA Structural Piglet Template with Tractography from late prenatal to early postnatal (Dickerson and Dobbing, 1967; Thibault and Margulies, 1998)
The Gan template shows improved gray matter/white matter (GM/WM) contrast, important anatomical areas such as the optic chiasm and bulbus olfactorius needed to be removed to allow for better positional accuracy, limiting the usability of this template
Our present study reports the creation of a multi-modal piglet brain template that includes T1, diffusion weighted MR imaging (DWI) metric map and population-based wholebrain fiber tracts
Summary
The domestic piglet is a common animal model for translational research in pediatric neuroscience because of its neuroanatomical commonalities with the human brain (Lind et al, 2007; Sauleau et al, 2009; Mendl et al, 2010; Gieling et al, 2011), with respect to the morphological shape of the piglet brain including the gyral and sulcal pattern, and the rapid period of brain growth lasting. Diffusion tractography derived from DWI is a powerful measure to aid image interpretation through visualization of the orientation and 3D course of white matter tracts (Hiltunen et al, 2005) It helps clarify the architecture of tissues by integrating the estimates of voxel-based diffusion maximums (Feldman et al, 2010; Alexander et al, 2011). Our present study reports the creation of a multi-modal piglet brain template that includes T1, DWI metric map and population-based wholebrain fiber tracts. T1 images provide good contrast between GM and WM, and diffusion metrics characterize the integrity of white matter fibers These metric maps allow the possibility of advanced automated structural analysis to investigate the WM changes at the voxel-level. The population-based whole-brain fiber tracts can provide valuable information on WM connections across subjects, with fiber reliability and variability estimated through the inter-subject consistency of the fibers
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