Constructing the Rodent Stereotaxic Brain Atlas: A Survey, written by Luo Qingming, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of Hainan University, was published in Science China Life Sciences (CAS) recently. 

Gong Hui, professor of Wuhan National Research Center for Optoelectronics at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, is the corresponding author of the paper.

CAS is an academic journal co-sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. It is committed to publishing high-quality, original results in both basic and applied life science research.

The stereotaxic brain atlas is a fundamental reference tool commonly used in the field of neuroscience. The paper provides a brief history of brain atlas development and clarifies three key conceptual elements of stereotaxic brain atlasing: brain image, atlas, and stereotaxis. It refines four technical indices for evaluating the construction of atlases: the quality of staining and labeling, the granularity of delineation, spatial resolution, and the precision of spatial location and orientation.

Additionally, Luo discusses state-of-the-art technologies and their trends in the fields of image acquisition, stereotaxic coordinate construction, image processing, anatomical structure recognition, and publishing: the procedures of brain atlas illustration. It is believed that the use of single-cell resolution and micron-level location precision will become a future trend in the study of the stereotaxic brain atlas, which will greatly benefit the development of neuroscience.

Science China Life Sciences publishes Luo Qingming's article.