Abstract
Genetically engineered mouse models are used extensively as models of human development and developmental diseases. Conventional histological approaches are static and two-dimensional, and do not provide a full understanding of the dynamic, spatiotemporal changes in developing mouse embryos. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offers a noninvasive and longitudinal approach for three-dimensional in utero imaging of normal and mutant mouse embryos. In this chapter, we describe MRI approaches that have been developed for imaging the living embryonic mouse brain and vasculature. Details are provided on the animal preparation and setup, MRI equipment, acquisition and reconstruction methods that have been found to be most useful for in utero MRI, including examples of applications to fetal mouse neuroimaging.
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Acknowledgements
We thank all the people, current and past, in the Zhang, Wu and Turnbull labs who have contributed to developing the protocols described in this chapter. This research was supported, in part, by grants from the National Institutes of Health: R01NS038461 and R01HL078665 (DHT); R01NS070909 and R01HD974593 (JZ); R21NS098018 (DW).
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Zhang, J., Wu, D., Turnbull, D.H. (2018). In Utero MRI of Mouse Embryos. In: García Martín, M., López Larrubia, P. (eds) Preclinical MRI. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1718. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7531-0_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7531-0_17
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