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Micro-CT Imaging and Morphometric Analysis of Mouse Neonatal Brains
Published on: May 19, 2023
Multi-contrast human neonatal brain atlas: application to normal neonate development analysis.
Kenichi Oishi1, Susumu Mori, Pamela K Donohue
1Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA. koishi@mri.jhu.edu
Neuroimage
|February 1, 2011
Summary
This study developed a neonatal brain atlas using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and MRI. This advanced atlas enables accurate brain image normalization and analysis for improved neonatal and pediatric care.
Area of Science:
- Neuroimaging
- Developmental Neuroscience
- Medical Image Analysis
Background:
- Neonatal brain MRI is crucial for detecting abnormalities but faces challenges in quantitative analysis due to rapid contrast changes.
- Normalization-based image analysis is effective but rarely applied to neonatal brain MRI because of poor cross-subject registration accuracy.
- Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) offers superior anatomical contrast in neonate brains, making it ideal for normalization-based analysis.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a neonatal brain atlas using DTI and co-registered anatomical MRI for quantitative image analysis.
- To enable accurate normalization of neonatal brain images to an atlas space for detailed anatomical parcellation.
- To characterize white matter developmental changes in neonates using the developed atlas and normalization techniques.
Main Methods:
- Development of neonatal brain atlases integrating DTI and anatomical MRI data.
- Application of diffeomorphic transformation for normalizing neonatal brain images to the atlas space.
- Three-dimensional parcellation of normalized images into 122 distinct brain regions.
- Quantitative analysis of white matter maturation in infants aged 37-53 post-conceptional weeks.
Main Results:
- Successful creation of neonatal brain atlases with detailed anatomical information.
- Accurate normalization of neonatal brain images, achieving accuracy comparable to human raters.
- Identification of posterior-to-anterior and central-to-peripheral maturation patterns in white matter development.
- Demonstration of the atlas's utility in characterizing developmental changes in neonatal white matter.
Conclusions:
- The developed neonatal brain atlas and normalization method provide a robust tool for quantitative analysis of neonatal brain MRI.
- This approach facilitates the study of white matter maturation and its developmental trajectories.
- Future applications include investigating prenatal factors, preterm birth effects, and identifying imaging biomarkers for neonatal neurological disorders.
