A multi-institutional consortium including Duke University has created startlingly crisp 3-D microscopic views of tiny mouse brains — unveiled layer by layer — by extending the capabilities of conventional magnetic resonance imaging to create images more than 100,000 times higher resolution than a clinical MRI scan.

High resolution magnetic resonance imaging — which the researchers call “MRI histology” — provides distortion-free 3-D images with superb ability to distinguish subtle tissue differences in the brain, not distorted as it would be in conventional histological techniques.