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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 Jun 17.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Protoc. 2020 May 13;15(6):1992–2023. doi: 10.1038/s41596-020-0318-4

Figure 6: Benchtop testing of Craniobot function on plastic tube and key steps during surface profiling:

Figure 6:

(a) Photograph illustrating a plastic tube adapted and secured in the Craniobot stereotax for mock circular craniotomy procedure. Scale bar, 10 mm. (b) Top left: Photograph illustrating the surface profiler stylus tip at the marked ‘origin’ on the surface of the plastic tube. Top right: Photograph illustrating the end mill at the marked ‘origin’ on the surface of the plastic tube. Bottom: Photograph of end result of milling a circular trench of depth 50 μm using the Craniobot. Scale bars, 1 mm. Surface profiling: (c) Left: Photograph of the stylus prior to starting ‘Find Origin’. Middle: Stylus after stopping at Bregma. Right: Photograph of the end mill positioned at Bregma prior to CNC milling. Scale bars, 1 mm. (d) Left: Result of surface profile displayed after profiling a circular craniotomy of diameter 3 mm centered at 2 mm to the right and 2 mm posterior to Bregma. Center: Result of surface profile displayed after profiling a large craniotomy covering both hemispheres of the dorsal cortex. Right: Result of surface profiles displayed after profiling a rectangular area with non-adjacent corners located at (−1.5 mm ML, −1.5 mm AP) and (−3.5 mm ML, −3.5 mm AP) for skull thinning. Circular craniotomy and whole dorsal cortex craniotomy surface profiles were performed on a male, 12-week-old C57BL/6J mouse. Profiling for skull thinning procedure was performed on a male, 16-week-old C57BL/6J mouse. Orange dots indicate pilot points at which the skulls were profiled, blue dots indicate points offset by a depth of 50 μm. Orange lines simulate interpolated path taken by the end mill at the skull surface. Blue lines simulate the linearly interpolated path taken by the end mill if offset by a depth of 50 μm. (e) Erroneous surface profiles resulting from false positive measurements: Left: when profiling for a circular craniotomy and Right: when profiling for a craniotomy over the dorsal cortex. False positive measurements are indicated by red circles.