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RESEARCH PLAN |
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Principal Investigator/Program Director Williams,Robert W. |
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Project 3: NeuroCartographer and Segmentation of the MBL (Nissanov, PI)In a twist of a well-worn aphorism, John Morrison and Patrick Hof (1998) note, A number is worth a thousand pictures. Projects 1 and 2 will generate massive collections of images and through-focus series from brains of several thousand mice. The next task is to extract numbers from the MBLs vast collection of digital micrographs. Therefore, the main objective of Project 3 is to develop efficient tools to support transformation of huge image databases into compact quantitative representations of variation in the architecture of the mouse CNS. Using the MBL and iScope images, the NeuroCartographer Project will continue a productive line of research at Drexel University. Aim 1: Construction of mouse 3D brain atlases and navigation softwareEfficient segmentation of the MBL collection ultimately relies on fully delineated 3D models (atlases) of the mouse brain. (Segmentation refers to image analysis procedures that define spatial boundaries of neuroanatomical structures.) We will construct 10-m isotropic 3D digital representations for both males and females of two strains of mice, C57BL/6J and DBA/2J, which are the parental strains of both our set of 1400 advanced intercross progeny and the 35 BXD recombinant inbred strains now in the MBL. Three-dimensional boundaries of approximately 1200 structureshomologs of the structures defined in our rat brain atlas (Nissanov and Bertrand 1998a)will be manually delineated. The spatial coordinates of one of the atlases will serve as the standard coordinate system of the MBL. The other atlases will be mapped into this coordinate system with an accuracy of 20 mm. To support viewing of the atlases and their anatomical delineations over the Internet, navigation software (NeuroTerrain) will be developed.
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