The Development of Small Laboratory Animal Atlas

Abstract

A new cryosection milling imaging system with high spatial resolution is developed to screen small laboratory animals such as mice and rats. The system hardware consists of cutting device, Image Capture and Photography device, refrigerated storage and parallel data processing system. By this system high spatial resolution (no less than 20 μm) small laboratory animal atlas can be achieved. After image registration, image segmentation and 3D reconstruction, a small laboratory animal can be visualized. This paper, taking an adult SD (Sprague-Dawley) rat as an example, describes an experimental process of cryoection milling imaging, in which SD Rat atlas was obtained(the voxels size is 20 μm × 20 μm × 20 μm, cryosection images were captured in 4,600×2,580×24-bit BMP format, 9475 pages, 314.68G). By this system 3D microstructure of small laboratory animal can be obtained accurately. Cryoection milling imaging system offers a new efficient method for small laboratory animal study.