1. A method for preparing an image simulating the anatomy of a small subject test animal comprising the use of two or more non-tomographic imaging modalities, said non-tomographic imaging modalities incorporated in a single imaging enclosure including, but not limited to one or more x-ray sources and resultant x-ray projections, photographic cameras and resulting digital or optical images and surface scanners and resultant surface scans, said process comprising: placing the subject animal in or on a carrier, the carrier being in the imaging enclosure or inserting the animal and carrier into the image enclosure, such that the location of the test animal on said carrier in the imaging enclosure is a focal point for each of the non-tomographic imaging modalities, obtaining a surface scan of the subject test animal, or a combination of one or more of an x-ray projection and a photographic image, or a combination of one or more of an x-ray projection, a photographic or digital image and a surface scan of the subject animal to provide a simulation combination, and co-registering the simulation combination with a previously generated digital atlas of the anatomy of the same or similar test animals, wherein an iterative process is used to co-register the atlas to the simulation combination obtained by the non-tomographic modalities wherein: the non-tomographic modalities are combined to generate a 3D surface mesh based on a mutual information similarity metric and B-Splines, the registration results of the non-tomographic modalities are then combined into a 3D deformation which is applied to the atlas to form a deformed atlas, and the iteration is repeated until the difference between the atlas and the deformed atlas conforms to a small preset difference between two adjacent iterations.