High Temporal Resolution Longitudinal Cerebral Fetal Baboon MRI Acquisitions for the Study of Cortical Development – BaboFet

BaboFet is an interdisciplinary project that brings together specialists in cortical anatomy, data analysis, fetal MRI acquisitions, non-human primates, and anesthesiology. The project aims at building a unique database of longitudinal fetal brain images acquired on baboons with a very high temporal resolution: one MR scan a week for the last ten weeks of gestation, period during which cortical folding develops. Such database is unique, does not exist yet, will be shared with the neuroimaging community, and will provide an exceptional resource for the study of prenatal brain development. We will use the database ourselves to explore several questions that are essential to characterize normal and pathological cortical development: the link between folding and tissue maturation, the relationship between folding and short-range connectivity, the emergence of variability of folding patterns, and the dynamics of cortical morphogenesis.