Development And Application Of Multi-species And Multi-modal Animal Brain Imaging Data Processing Platform Based On The Region Of Interest Analysis

The brain is the most complex organ in nature,and the nervous system has always been one of the key areas of biomedical research.Neuroimaging techniques,including Magnetic Resonance Imaging(MRI),Positron Emission Tomography(PET),etc.,have become indispensable detection methods in basic research and clinical applications of the nervous system.Due to the particularity of biomedical research,many studies can not directly use human beings for experiments,such as the research and development of new drugs and the research of pathological development process,all need to use animal models for experiments.Compared with traditional anatomical experiments,animal brain imaging experiments can achieve in vivo and longitudinal tracking of the changes in brain function/structure of model animals,so it is of great significance in neuroscience research.Data analysis is critical in neuroimaging research.At present,there are relatively mature software for data analysis of human brain imaging,but there is still a lack of general analysis software for data analysis of animal brain imaging.Due to the complexity of neuroscience research,animal experiments may be performed on different species of laboratory animals.In addition,the brain size of different species of animals varies greatly,and different diseases are also applicable to different imaging technologies.Therefore,the analysis of animal brain image data is more challenging than that of human brain.The most important thing of brain image data analysis based on region of interest(ROI)is to unify the brain images of each subject into the standard space and align them with the brain atlas.In this paper,based on the ROI method,a different types and different modalities of animal brain image data analysis toolbox were established,named Image Analysis Toolbox of Animal Brain(IATAB).IATAB could provide batch analysis and processing flow of brain imaging data for commonly used experimental species including rats,mice,tree shrews and rhesus monkeys.In order to realize the study of brain evolution,the toolbox also integrated the human brain image processing unit.IATAB was built based on the Matlab language and integrated a graphical user interface(GUI),which could realize interactive selection of regions of interest.By analyzing the disease model of rats with left middle cerebral artery occlusion(MCAO),and analyzing the change trend of species diencephalon evolution frontal lobe relative volume,the toolbox was tested,verified and applied,and the toolbox was also applied to explore the differences of species diencephalon evolution frontal lobe metabolism.The above analysis of PET data and MRI data validates the reliability and utility of IATAB.It is expected that this open-source software will provide an effective method for animal brain image analysis and cross-species research in a simple,fast and flexible way,and further promote the translation of clinical results.