Probabilistic Brain Atlases of.pdf

1 Probabilistic Brain Atlases of Normal and Diseased Populations Arthur W. Toga, Paul M. Thompson, Katherine L. Narr and Elizabeth R. Sowell Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, Department of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA A book chapter for Databasing the Brain: From Data to Knowledge (Neuroinformatics) Edited by Steven H. Koslow and Shankar Subramaniam John Wiley Sons, Inc. Please address correspondence to: Dr. Arthur W. Toga (Rm. 4238, Reed Neurological Research Center) Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, Dept. of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine 710 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1769 Phone: (310) 206-2101 Fax: (310) 206-5518 E-mail: toga@ 2 Probabilistic Brain Atlases of Normal and Diseased Populations Abstract Morphometric variability of the human brain poses significant challenges for the creation of population-based atlases. The ability to statistically and visually compare and contrast brain image data from multiple individuals is essential to understand normal variability within a particular population as well as differentiate normal from diseased populations. This chapter introduces the application of probabilistic atlases to describe specific subpopulations, measures their variability and characterizes the structural differences between them. Utilizing data from structural MRI, we have built atlases with defined coordinate systems creating a framework to map data from functional, histological and other studies of the same population. These structural atlases provide an indexed and robust framework for the mapping of functions and other attributes. This paper describes the basic approach and a brief description of the underlying mathematical constructs that enable the calculation of probabilistic atlases and examples of their results from several different normal and diseased populations. 3 I. Introduction Comprehensive maps of brain st