**Background** This project provides a high-resolution male adult Wistar rat brain MRI template image together with a label of white matter, gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid. The template is constructed from 48 postmortem rat scans at a 9.4T horizontal bore MR system at an isotropic resolution of 0.94 mm. Images were averaged after linear and nonlinear alignment. T2-weighted anatomical images were acquired with a 3D gradient-echo scan [TR / TE = 6.87 / 3.34 ms; flip angle 15 degrees; 64 averages]. Diffusion-weighted images were acquired with a diffusion-weighted 8-shot spin-echo EPI scan [TR / TE = 2700 / 28 ms; 128 x 128 matrix; field-of-view 25 x 25 mm; 55 slices of 0.2 mm; 8 averages; b-value 3174 s/mm^2; 60 diffusion-weighted images in non-collinear directions; 6 b0 images]. Fractional anisotropy parameter maps were determined on voxel-wise estimates of the diffusion tensor after eddy current corrections. Tissue segmentation in white matter, gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid was done with K-means classification.