3D VISUALIZATION OF THE MEDAKA BY MR MICROSCOPY

ABSTRACT freshwater fish. The medaka as well as the zebrafish, has for developmental and evolutionary biology and for MRI has been an essential diagnostic tool in a clinical situation due to mainly its ability to differentiate soft tissues. In order to achieve the cellular level spatial resolution, we have been developing MRI with very high spatial resolution, “MR Microscope”, by using a 14.1 T superconducting magnet. The MR Microscope is equipped with 3 T/m triaxial magnetic field gradients and specialized RF coil, which we built by ourselves. The medaka, a small freshwater teleost, was visualized three dimensionally with (20 µ m) 3 voxel by the MR Microscope. The medaka is an important model system of vertebrata for developmental biology and carcinogenesis as is the zebrafish. We compared the 3D images of wild type medaka to those of mutant medaka, which lacked tumor suppressor gene, p53, and found the large differences between them. expectanc