A team led by Duke’s Center for In Vivo Microscopy, along with researchers from other universities, has achieved the highest resolution imaging of a mouse brain using MRI technology. By improving the resolution of MRI, the team generated images of a mouse brain that are much clearer than those of a typical clinical MRI for humans, providing a new way to visualize the connectivity of the entire brain. A single voxel of the new images measures just 5 microns, which is 64 million times smaller than a clinical MRI voxel. The researchers hope that new insights from mouse imaging will lead to a better understanding of how the human brain changes with age, diet, or neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Photo Credit: Hal Gatewood