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This article describes the SRI24 atlas, a new standard reference system of normal human brain anatomy, that was created using template-free population registration of high-resolution magnetic resonance images acquired at 3T in a group of 24 normal control subjects. The atlas comprises anatomical channels (T1, T2, and proton density weighted), diffusion-related channels (fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, longitudinal diffusivity, mean diffusion-weighted image), tissue channels (CSF probability, gray matter probability, white matter probability, tissue labels), and two cortical parcellation maps. The SRI24 atlas enables multichannel atlas-to-subject image registration. It is uniquely versatile in that it is equally suited for the two fundamentally different atlas applications: label propagation and spatial normalization. Label propagation, herein demonstrated using diffusion tensor image fiber tracking, is enabled by the increased sharpness of the SRI24 atlas compared with other available atlases. Spatial normalization, herein demonstrated using data from a young-old group comparison study, is enabled by its unbiased average population shape property. For both propagation and normalization, we also report the results of quantitative comparisons with seven other published atlases: Colin27, MNI152, ICBM452 (warp5 and air12), and LPBA40 (SPM5, FLIRT, AIR). Our results suggest that the SRI24 atlas, although based on 3T MR data, allows equally accurate spatial normalization of data acquired at 1.5T as the comparison atlases, all of which are based on 1.5T data. Furthermore, the SRI24 atlas is as suitable for label propagation as the comparison atlases and detailed enough to allow delineation of anatomical structures for this purpose directly in the atlas.
Rohlfing et al. (Wed,) studied this question.