title: Construction of a consistent high-definition spatio-temporal atlas of the developing brain using adaptive kernel regression.
abstract: Medical imaging has shown that, during early development, the brain undergoes more changes in size, shape and appearance than at any other time in life. A better understanding of brain development requires a spatio-temporal atlas that characterizes the dynamic changes during this period. In this paper we present an approach for constructing a 4D atlas of the developing brain, between 28 and 44 weeks post-menstrual age at time of scan, using T1 and T2 weighted MR images from 204 premature neonates. The method used for the creation of the average 4D atlas utilizes non-rigid registration between all pairs of images to eliminate bias in the atlas toward any of the original images. In addition, kernel regression is used to produce age-dependent anatomical templates. A novelty in our approach is the use of a time-varying kernel width, to overcome the variations in the distribution of subjects at different ages. This leads to an atlas that retains a consistent level of detail at every time-point. Comparisons between the resulting atlas and atlases constructed using affine and non-rigid registration are presented. The resulting 4D atlas has greater anatomic definition than currently available 4D atlases created using various affine and non-rigid registration approaches, an important factor in improving registrations between the atlas and individual subjects. Also, the resulting 4D atlas can serve as a good representative of the population of interest as it reflects both global and local changes. The atlas is publicly available at www.brain-development.org.
authors: Biomedical Image Analysis (BioMedIA) Group, Department of Computing, Imperial College London, and Centre for the Developing Brain, Hammersmith Hospital, London, UK. a.serag09@imperial.ac.uk
authors: Ahmed
authors: A
authors: Serag
authors: Paul
authors: P
authors: Aljabar
authors: Gareth
authors: G
authors: Ball
authors: Serena J
authors: SJ
authors: Counsell
authors: James P
authors: JP
authors: Boardman
authors: Mary A
authors: MA
authors: Rutherford
authors: A David
authors: AD
authors: Edwards
authors: Joseph V
authors: JV
authors: Hajnal
authors: Daniel
authors: D
authors: Rueckert
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D000465:Algorithms; D001271:Atlases as Topic; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000254:growth & development*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007234:Infant, Premature; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D015233:Models, Statistical; D012044:Regression Analysis