Norris C, Lisinski J, McNeil E, VanMeter JW, VandeVord P, LaConte SM. MRI brain templates of the male Yucatan minipig.
Neuroimage 2021;
235:118015. [PMID:
33798725 DOI:
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118015]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/22/2020] [Revised: 03/14/2021] [Accepted: 03/17/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022] Open
Abstract
The pig is growing in popularity as an experimental animal because its gyrencephalic brain is similar to humans. Currently, however, there is a lack of appropriate brain templates to support functional and structural neuroimaging pipelines. The primary contribution of this work is an average volume from an iterative, non-linear registration of 70 five- to seven-month-old male Yucatan minipigs. In addition, several aspects of this study are unique, including the comparison of linear and non-linear template generation, the characterization of a large and homogeneous cohort, an analysis of effective resolution after averaging, and the evaluation of potential in-template bias as well as a comparison with a template from another minipig species using a "left-out" validation set. We found that within our highly homogeneous cohort, non-linear registration produced better templates, but only marginally so. Although our T1-weighted data were resolution limited, we preserved effective resolution across the multi-subject average, produced templates that have high gray-white matter contrast and demonstrate superior registration accuracy compared to an alternative minipig template.
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