Development of a Low-Cost 3D Printable Mouse Brain Matrix

GIANATIEMPO, OCTAVIO; CÁNEPA, EDUARDO T.; ALBERCA, CAROLINA D.; CHERTOFF, MARIELA; FILEVICH, OSCAR

Congreso; XXXIII Congress of the Argentine Society for Research in Neuroscience; 2018

A Mouse Brain Matrix allows to slice a mouse brain into coronal or sagittal sections, enabling precise and reproducible removal of small brain regions for biological experiments. These matrices are commercially available but are expensive and designed for a defined species and age. Reproducibility is a hallmark of good science but usually involves high costs when designs and hardware are proprietary. Open science hardware allows for greater reproducibility while improving accessibility when materials are low cost and easy to obtain, such as in 3D-printable designs. 3D printing is now within reach of many scientific laboratories allowing for rapid and inexpensive prototyping of custom laboratory equipment. We therefore aimed to produce a simple design that could be used to section brain tissue in a reliable and reproducible manner using freely available software and a consumer grade 3D printer. We have designed a matrix for adult mouse brains from an MRI scan processed with 3D modeling open source software: 3D Slicer, Meshlab, and OpenScad. Our matrix is specifically designed for the dissection of the dorsal and ventral hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, and amygdala using ordinary razor blades and plastic micropipette tips. However, the design can be adapted to slice different regions or brain sizes and printed in any available material. The mouse brain matrix is freely available at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3077272