A stereotactic device for rabbits based on mandibular and cranial landmarks: technical note.

✓ The authors have developed a stereotactic device for use in rabbits that uses the plane at the base of the mandible combined with cranial sutures as an anatomical reference. The device was developed for a study designed to evaluate catheters for infection prophylaxis, and this required the implantation of silicone catheters along a reproducible trajectory through the lateral ventricle. Cadaver and atlas studies demonstrated consistent spatial relationships between intracranial structures and the surface plane on which the animals were resting during the surgery. This plane is formed by the 2 mandibular angles and the mandibular tip. The authors developed a stainless steel stereotactic device that uses this mandibular plane as well as the coronal and sagittal sutures as spatial references. Operations were performed in 60 animals using the stereotactic device, and postmortem dissections of the animals' brains demonstrated 78.6% accuracy of the trajectory within a tolerance of deviation of 5°, and 94.6% ac...