Transcriptome Tomography for Brain Analysis in the Web-Accessible Anatomical Space
Figure 6
Spatial integration of 3D expression maps into the WHS MRI digital atlas.
(A) A schematic for the integration. E80, the brain volume common to all expression maps in the ViBrism space, (colored in green) was transformed (shown with an arrow) into the brain volume in the Waxholm Space (WHS in gray). (B–D) Integration of Huntington’s disease-related maps. Areas defined by the gene expression of a pathogenetic combination deduced from the previous knowledge, Htt(+)/Bdnf(−), are colored with the Htt expression density in the ViBrism space (a right small panel in B). After the transformation into WHS, the areas are highlighted and colored with anatomical labels based on MRI data [26] (a large panel in B). The areas contain vulnerable regions in this disease as follows: Label 1; Cerebral cortex (anterior rather than posterior, 22% of the volume with label 1), 9; Ventral thalamic nuclei (100%) [28], 15; Globus pallidus (100%) [17] shown in the panel D, 23; CPu (99%) also seen in the panel C, 24; hippocampus (77%), 37; cerebellum (21%). Table S3 shows % of volumes overlapped with the Htt(+)Bdnf(−) areas in each of 37 anatomical regions labeled in WHS. The MRI T1 and T2* atlases are shown in the rectangular vertical and horizontal planes, respectively.