Acquiring a whole mouse brain at the micrometer scale is a complex, continuous and time-consuming process. Because of defects caused by sample preparation and microscopy, the acquired image data sets suffer from various macroscopic density artefacts that worsen the image quality. We have to develop the available preprocessing methods to improve image quality by removing the artefacts that effect cell segmentation, vascular tracing and visualization. In this study, a set of automatic artefact removal methods is proposed for images obtained by tissue staining and optical microscopy. These methods significantly improve the complicated images that contain various structures, including cells and blood vessels. The whole mouse brain data set with Nissl staining was tested, and the intensity of the processed images was uniformly distributed throughout different brain areas. Furthermore, the processed image data set with its uniform brightness and high quality is now a fundamental atlas for image analysis, including cell segmentation, vascular tracing and visualization.

The dorsal raphe nucleus (DR) and median raphe nucleus (MR) contain populations of glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons that regulate diverse behavioral functions. However, their whole-brain input-output circuits remain incompletely elucidated. We used viral tracing combined with fluorescence micro-optical sectioning tomography to generate a comprehensive whole-brain atlas of inputs and outputs of glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons in the DR and MR. We found that these neurons received inputs from similar upstream brain regions. The glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons in the same raphe nucleus had divergent projection patterns with differences in critical brain regions. Specifically, MR glutamatergic neurons projected to the lateral habenula through multiple pathways. Correlation and cluster analysis revealed that glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons in the same raphe nucleus received heterogeneous inputs and sent different collateral projections. This connectivity atlas further elucidates the anatomical architecture of the raphe nuclei, which could facilitate better understanding of their behavioral functions.