PRMix : primary region mix augmentation and benchmark dataset for precise whole mouse brain anatomical delineation

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Yuan, Kunhao and Woods, Hanan and Günar, Ülkü and Dominic, Digin and Wu, Ying and Qiu, Zhen and Grant, Seth G.N. (2026) PRMix : primary region mix augmentation and benchmark dataset for precise whole mouse brain anatomical delineation. NeuroImage, 331. p. 121881. 121881. ISSN 1053-8119 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2026.121881)

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Abstract

The architecture of the mouse brain shares remarkable similarities with the human brain, making it an essential model for studying brain pathologies, synaptic diversity, and regional specialization. A key step in such studies involves registering molecular images to reference brain atlases, a process hindered by the difficulty of accurately delineating brain regions. Toward this, we have curated a collection of high-resolution, dual-fluorescence microscopy images, termed as dual-fluorescence mouse brain microscopy (DMBM) dataset, complemented by expert annotations of 118 subregions in parasagittal sections. This dataset provides unprecedented insights into the molecular and structural complexity of the mouse brain. However, its full potential for detailed whole-brain analysis is compromised by challenges such as boundary ambiguity and sample scarcity in existing automated segmentation methods, prompting the development of the primary region mix (PRMix) augmentation method. PRMix is specifically designed to expand these datasets, enhance the realism of synthetic data and minimize overlap between adjacent regions. Our approach, together with the curated dataset, achieves superior segmentation performance across the mouse brain compared with existing methods, setting a new benchmark in brain imaging research.

ORCID iDs

Yuan, Kunhao, Woods, Hanan, Günar, Ülkü, Dominic, Digin, Wu, Ying, Qiu, Zhen ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0226-7855 and Grant, Seth G.N.;
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