Abstract
The laboratory mouse has been widely used as a model system to investigate the genetic control mechanisms of mammalian brain development. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an important tool to characterize changes in brain anatomy in mutant mouse strains and injury progression in mouse models of fetal and neonatal brain injury. Progress in the last decade has enabled us to acquire MRI data with increasing anatomical details from the embryonic and neonatal mouse brain. High-resolution ex vivo MRI, especially with advanced diffusion MRI methods, can visualize complex microstructural organizations in the developing mouse brain. In vivo MRI of the embryonic mouse brain, which is critical for tracking anatomical changes longitudinally, has become available. Applications of these techniques may lead to further insights into the complex and dynamic processes of brain development.
Highlights
The mammalian brain undergoes rapid growth during the prenatal and neonatal periods
We mostly focus on the latest developments in using Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the developing mouse brain
This is one of the advantages that makes diffusion MRI the ideal tool to examine the development of early white matter tracts in the embryonic mouse brain as well as several gray matter structures, e.g., the embryonic cortex (Zhang et al, 2003)
Summary
The mammalian brain undergoes rapid growth during the prenatal and neonatal periods. Structural changes, from the formation of basic functional units and neural circuitry to axonal pruning and myelination, are critical for normal brain functions at the adult stage. It is necessary to have a gradient system capable of generating 400 mT/m or higher gradient strength and fast slew rates in order to reach a spatial resolution of 0.1 mm or higher (Johnson et al, 2002) These conditions can be more met in ex vivo imaging than in vivo imaging, as the brain can be dissected out to fit into the most sensitive coil and imaged for several hours on high field preclinical MR systems with high performance gradient systems. Petiet et al recently reported whole body MRI of embryonic and postnatal mice at a spatial resolution of 0.019 mm and used the technique to characterize anatomical phenotypes in a mutant mouse strain (Petiet et al, 2008; See Table 1 for the imaging parameters)
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