Life Sciences Division
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

An Operating MicroCT Scanner for Mice (November 1999)

The Mammalian Genetics program in the Life Sciences Division at ORNL has taken delivery of the first MicroCT scanner designed and built by ORNL's Instrumentation and Controls Division under the leadership of Mike Paulus. This instrument, a 4-ft by 5-ft tabletop device, will be used by technical staff in the Mammalian Genetics Research Facility (MGRF) to scan a mouse from each potentially mutant pedigree to detect subtle anatomical abnormalities resulting from newly induced gene mutations. Each mouse is under gas anesthesia for the duration of the scan, which is entirely computer-controlled, and each image is reconstructed from the raw scanning data and stored on CD-ROM. The scanner employs new software, written by Shaun Gleason of I&C, to reconstruct the whole-body data sets in 3-D; Gleason has also initiated the development of automated organ recognition algorithms for the instrument. These deformable model-based segmentation algorithms were successfully demonstrated by screening for polycystic kidney disease in mice.

In its high-resolution scanning mode, the scanner produces images with ~50 micron resolution; when operated in its high-speed (screening) mode the scanner produces images with ~140 micron resolution. The scanner has axial and transaxial fields of view of 50 mm each, permitting whole-body data sets of mature mice to be acquired in 2 or 3 steps. High-resolution (single scan) data sets are acquired in 10-15 minutes while screening scan data sets are acquired in 5-7 minutes. A graphical user interface (GUI) provides easy access to all of these algorithms as well as to a range of diagnostic tools. This instrument will be in daily use in the MGRF, and will be available to federal and non-federal partners as a part of the MGRF User Facility. (Funding Source: DOE-OBER; Contact: Dabney Johnson, 574-0953 or dkj@ornl.gov)