The Development of Small Laboratory Animal Atlas

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 mum) 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 cryosection milling imaging, in which SD rat atlas was obtained (the voxels size is 20 mum times 20 mum times 20 mum, cryosection images were captured in 4,600 times 2,580 times 24-bit BMP format, 9475 pages, 314.68G). By this system 3D microstructure of small laboratory animal can be obtained accurately. Cryosection milling imaging system offers a new efficient method for small laboratory animal study