A high-resolution MRI brain template for adult Beagle

Abstract Canines, which exhibit similar emotional and social processing to humans, are becoming one of the preferred animal models for neuroscience research. Beagles are the most common laboratory canine, thanks to their moderate size, docile nature, and strong immunity. However, there is currently no MRI brain template for the purebred Beagle, which hinders their use in studies involving neuroimaging. Here, we present the Beagle Brain Template (BBT), which consists of high-resolution in vivo T1-weighted and T2-weighted templates, as well as a myelin template, generated from purebred Beagles. We also present a normalized pipeline for mapping individual structure images onto the BBT space. The BBT shows low variation in the tissue probability map and provides descriptive statistics with smaller variability of brain tissue volumes and brain sizes than that of existing templates. This high-resolution purebred canine brain template lays the foundation for future studies aimed at in vivo analyses of the brain structure and function of the Beagle dogs.