Multimodal stereotaxic rat brain atlas for automated image analysis and data integration in 3D

Background & Aim:

Rats are often favoured in neuroscience research over mice due to their larger brain, more complex behaviour, and closer metabolic similarity to humans. However, acquiring high-quality and high-resolution datasets of molecular markers in intact rat brains is challenging. Advances in tissue clearing techniques and light sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) now allow for detailed exploration of the entire rat central nervous system. The current project aims to adapt and extend the multimodal 3D stereotaxic mouse brain atlas pipeline developed by Perens [1] for the rat brain. This will enable streamlined analysis and facilitate the integration of datasets from various 3D rat brain imaging techniques.