A deformable atlas of the laboratory mouse.

PURPOSE: This paper presents a deformable mouse atlas of the laboratory mouse anatomy. This atlas is fully articulated and can be positioned into arbitrary body poses. The atlas can also adapt body weight by changing body length and fat amount. PROCEDURES: A training set of 103 micro-CT images was used to construct the atlas. A cage-based deformation method was applied to realize the articulated pose change. The weight-related body deformation was learned from the training set using a linear regression method. A conditional Gaussian model and thin-plate spline mapping were used to deform the internal organs following the changes of pose and weight. RESULTS: The atlas was deformed into different body poses and weights, and the deformation results were more realistic compared to the results achieved with other mouse atlases. The organ weights of this atlas matched well with the measurements of real mouse organ weights. This atlas can also be converted into voxelized images with labeled organs, pseudo CT images and tetrahedral mesh for phantom studies. CONCLUSIONS: With the unique ability of articulated pose and weight changes, the deformable laboratory mouse atlas can become a valuable tool for preclinical image analysis.