Thanks to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, a web-based 3-D digital atlas browser and database of the brain of a popular laboratory mouse is now available.

"Neuroscientists around the world can now download these extremely accurate anatomical templates and use them to map other data -- such as which parts of the brain are metabolically active and where particular genes are expressed -- and for making quantitative anatomical comparisons with other, genetically engineered mouse strains," said project leader Helene Benveniste, who is a researcher in Brookhaven's medical department and a professor of anesthesiology at Stony Brook University.

The mouse being on of the most common laboratory animal, this brain atlas database will definitely be a useful tool to other scientists in brain research.

The database is equipped with a downloadable visualization tool to view

• Individual MRI images of mouse brains
  
• Three types of atlases: individual atlases, minimum deformation atlases and probabilistic atlases
  
• The associated quantitative structural information, such as structural volumes and surface areas
  

To download images and data, register here.