Databases and Systems

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Painting:
An alternative mean of defining the domain is for the user to delineate or paint the
new domain directly onto the reconstruction using the Edinburgh Mouse Atlas paint
program (MAPaint see figure 5) or equivalent software [9]. This allows the user to
select an arbitrary section and delineate regions directly using a variety of painting
“tools” [9]. This program also allows the editing of domains defined by any other
means therefore can be used in conjunction with a text definition of the domain to
allow additional refinement. This is likely to be more efficient than defining the
whole 3D domain de novo.
Figure 5: The main feedback window and two section views of the Edinburgh Mouse
Atlas Theiler stage 14 embryo in the program MAPaint showing the 3D feedback and
view controls.
Warping:
Submission using text and/or painting can be time consuming and most graphical
data will be entered by using image processing both to extract the required pattern
and to transform or warp the data onto the atlas. Before generating the submission it
is assumed that the user has digitized the required experimental data, then the
simplest means is to locate the matching section from the atlas and for the user to
define “tie-points’’ that can be used to produce a warp transformation, e.g. as a thin-