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In vivo symmetric multi-contrast MRI brain templates and atlas for spontaneously hypertensive rats

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Abstract

Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) are a valuable animal model of essential hypertension. The increasing use of SHRs in neuroimaging has generated an urgent demand for a template set that provides a reference for advanced data analysis. Structural T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and functional MRI scans that were used to build the template set were obtained from 8 SHRs longitudinally scanned in vivo at 10, 24 and 52 weeks of age. These symmetric multi-contrast templates were constructed by iterative registration and averaging. The cortical atlas was derived from the Tohoku atlas, and the subcortical regions were manually delineated based on the templates. A set of SHR brain images named the Hebei Medical University rat brain template set (HRT) comprised 3D symmetric T2WI, raw T2-weighted signal with no added diffusion weighting (B0), fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD) and blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) templates; tissue probability maps (TPMs) of gray matter (GM), white matter (WM) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF); and a whole-brain atlas with 163 labels. We quantitatively validated the template and characterized the longitudinal changes in brain morphology in different brain tissues as SHRs aged. To our knowledge, the HRT is the first MRI template set for SHRs. We believe that the HRT can serve as a beneficial tool for precise analysis of the SHR brain using structural and functional MRI, which can promote neuroimaging studies on essential hypertension.

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Data and code availability statement

The raw data required to construct the template cannot be shared at this time, as the data also form part of an ongoing study. The template and atlas are freely available at https://www.nitrc.org/projects/template_shr.

Abbreviations

AVD:

Absolute volume difference

B0:

Raw T2-weighted signal with no added diffusion weighting

BOLD:

Blood oxygen level dependent

CSF:

Cerebrospinal fluid

CV:

Coefficient of variation

DICE:

Dice coefficient

DTI:

Diffusion tensor imaging

FA:

Fractional anisotropy

FOV:

Field of view

FSL:

FMRIB Software Library

fMRI:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging

GM:

Gray matter

HD:

Hausdorff distance

HRT:

The Hebei Medical University rat brain template set

MD:

Mean diffusivity

MRI:

Magnetic resonance imaging

RARE:

Rapid acquisition with relaxation enhancement

RSID:

Residual signal intensity difference

RVD:

Relative volume difference

SHR:

Spontaneously hypertensive rat

TIV:

Total intracranial volume

TPM:

Tissue probability maps

T2WI:

T2-weighted images

WM:

White matter

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Binbin Nie for help regarding data processing and image computation. We also thank Ricardo Magalhães at the University of Minho for the helpful discussions. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (8177070094).

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (8177070094).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School, Hebei Medical University, Hebei, 050000, China

    Yingying Yang

  2. Department of Imaging, The First Hospital of Qinhuangdao, Hebei, 066000, China

    Yingying Yang

  3. Department of Radiology and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Functional Imaging, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, 300052, China

    Quan Zhang

  4. GE Healthcare China, Beijing, 100176, China

    Jialiang Ren

  5. Department of Medical Imaging, The Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University, No. 215 Heping West Road, Xinhua District, Shijiazhuang City, 050000, Hebei Province, China

    Qingfeng Zhu, Lixin Wang & Zuojun Geng

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  1. Yingying Yang
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  2. Quan Zhang
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  4. Qingfeng Zhu
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Contributions

YY created the template and atlas; QZ revised the draft manuscript; JR validated the template; QZ drafted the main body of the manuscript; LW and YY acquired the MRI data; ZG proposed the overall design of experiments and provided the funding.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zuojun Geng.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. We declare that we do not have any commercial or associative interest that represents a conflict of interest in connection with the work submitted.

Ethics approval

This study was conducted in strict accordance with the People’s Republic of China Ministry of Science and Technology Laboratory Animal Care guidelines, and the experiment was approved by the Experimental Animal Ethics Committee of Hebei Medical University.

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The work described is original research that has not been published previously and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. All the authors have approved the submission of the manuscript to your journal.

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Yang, Y., Zhang, Q., Ren, J. et al. In vivo symmetric multi-contrast MRI brain templates and atlas for spontaneously hypertensive rats. Brain Struct Funct 227, 1789–1801 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-022-02472-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-022-02472-3

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