User-friendly software for the analysis of brain lesions (ABLe)

We previously developed a software package called ABLe (analysis of brain lesions) which characterizes brain lesions in terms of lesion volume and intersection with cytoarchitecture (e.g. Brodmann areas). Since our previous publication, there have been significant improvements to this software package which utilize methods standard to the neuroimaging community. These features include spatial normalization to the MNI template brain (standard of the international consortium for brain mapping), and use of the volume occupancy Talairach labels (VOTL) and automated anatomical labeling (AAL) atlases for full brain quantification of structures impacted by the lesion. Methods for multi-subject studies including lesion-symptom mapping proposed by Bates et al. have been extended in ABLe to produce an exploratory analysis summarizing correlations between subjects with overlapping lesions and behavioral deficit. A subset of data from an ongoing traumatic head injury study correlating deficit with brain anatomy is used to demonstrate the power of this software package.