Generation and Disease Model Relevance of a Manganese Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging-Based NOD/scid-IL-2Rγc(null) Mouse Brain Atlas.

Strain specific mouse brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) atlases provide coordinate space linked anatomical registration. This allows longitudinal quantitative analyses of neuroanatomical volumes and imaging metrics for assessing the role played by aging and disease to the central nervous system. As NOD/scid-IL-2Rγ(c)(null) (NSG) mice allow human cell transplantation to study human disease, these animals are used to assess brain morphology.

Landmark optimization using local curvature for point-based nonlinear rodent brain image registration.

Purpose. To develop a technique to automate landmark selection for point-based interpolating transformations for nonlinear medical image registration. Materials and Methods.

A semi-automatic image segmentation method for extraction of brain volume from in vivo mouse head magnetic resonance imaging using Constraint Level Sets.

In vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of mouse brain has been widely used to non-invasively monitor disease progression and/or therapeutic effects in murine models of human neurodegenerative disease. Segmentation of MRI to differentiate brain from non-brain tissue (usually referred to as brain extraction) is required for many MRI data processing and analysis methods, including coregistration, statistical parametric analysis, and mapping to brain atlas and histology. This paper presents a semi-automatic brain extraction technique based on a level set method with the incorporation of user-defined constraints.

Effects of transcranial ultrasound and intravenous microbubbles on blood brain barrier permeability in a large animal model.

We sought to determine whether transtemporal-applied 1-MHz ultrasound-induced microbubble destruction may be a safe method of transiently altering blood brain barrier (BBB) permeability for drug delivery in a large animal model. Endothelial cells are an integral component of the BBB but also prevent passage of potentially therapeutic drugs. Ultrasound-mediated destruction (UMD) of microbubbles has been shown to disrupt this barrier in small animals when ultrasound is delivered through bone windows.

Ingress of blood-borne macrophages across the blood-brain barrier in murine HIV-1 encephalitis.

Blood-borne macrophage ingress into brain in HIV-1 associated neurocognitive disorders governs the tempo of disease. We used superparamagnetic iron-oxide particles loaded into murine bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMM) injected intravenously into HIV-1 encephalitis mice to quantitatively assess BMM entry into diseased brain regions. Magnetic resonance imaging tests were validated by histological coregistration and enhanced image processing.