Anterograde tract-tracing dataset for the Population Integrator pipeline (v1)

This dataset contains whole section images from 6 mouse brains in which very small injections of an anterograde tracer (biotynilated dextran amine, BDA) were performed in the Ventral Posterior Medial nucleus of the thalamus (VPM). The sections were 50 μm-thick, sectioned at a coronal angle, and imaged at a 100 μm interval, with one out of every two sections being captured. The section background was stained for cytochrome oxidase activity to better visualize area, layer and nuclei borders. One injection was performed on each hemisphere; since the thalamocortical projection is exclusively ipsilateral, each hemisphere can be considered an independent experiment. The labeled axonal projections are visible in the somatosensory cortices as sharply-delineated dark fibers. This repository serves as an example input dataset for the [Population Integrator pipeline](https://github.com/ntimonid/Population_Integrator), a Jupyter notebook that generates cortical flatmaps and other types of visualizations for experiments that have been registered to the Allen Mouse Brain Common Coordinate Framework (CCF) using the QUINT workflow. The Population Integrator pipeline is a helpful resource for the registration and analysis of mouse brain section images. The example data can be of useful to both experimentalists and computational modelers interested in the connectivity between thalamus and cortex.