Mammalian neurons operate at length scales spanning five orders of magnitude; micron-scale-diameter myelinated axons project millimeters across brain regions, ultimately forming nanometer scale synapses on individual post-synaptic neurons. Capturing these anatomical features across that breadth of scale has required imaging samples with multiple independent imaging modalities (e.g. MRI, electron microscopy, etc.). Translating between the different modalities, however, requires imaging the same brain with each. Here, we imaged the same postmortem mouse brain over five orders of spatial resolution using MRI, whole brain micron-scale synchrotron x-ray tomography (μCT), and large volume automated serial electron microscopy. Using this pipeline, we can track individual myelinated axons previously relegated to axon bundles in diffusion tensor MRI or arbitrarily trace neurons and their processes brain-wide and identify individual synapses on them. This pipeline provides both an unprecedented look across a single brain's multi-scaled organization as well as a vehicle for studying the brain's multi-scale pathologies.

中文翻译：

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单个死后小鼠大脑的五个峰分辨率的多模式成像

哺乳动物神经元的长度范围跨越五个数量级。微米级直径的髓鞘轴突在大脑区域投射数毫米，最终在单个突触后神经元上形成纳米级突触。要在整个尺度上捕获这些解剖特征，就需要具有多种独立成像方式（例如MRI，电子显微镜等）的成像样本。但是，在不同的方式之间进行翻译需要对每个相同的大脑成像。在这里，我们使用MRI，全脑微米级同步加速器X射线断层扫描（μCT）和大容量自动串行电子显微镜，对五个空间分辨率的同一死后小鼠大脑进行了成像。使用此管道，我们可以在弥散张量MRI中跟踪先前降级为轴突束的单个有髓轴突，或在全脑范围内任意跟踪神经元及其过程，并识别它们上的单个突触。该管道既提供了对单个大脑的多尺度组织的前所未有的外观，又为研究大脑的多尺度病理学提供了一种工具。