Vervet MRI atlas and label map for fully automated morphometric analyses

Area of Science:

• Neuroimaging
• Comparative Anatomy
• Primate Neuroscience

Background:

• Current non-human primate Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) templates often require manual brain preparation, limiting automated structural analysis.
• Developing standardized tools is crucial for efficient and reproducible morphometric studies in primate research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create a comprehensive vervet monkey (Chlorocebus aethiops) MRI population template, tissue probability maps (TPM), and a detailed label atlas.
• To enable fully automated structural MRI analyses, including skull-stripping, segmentation, and normalization, for vervet monkeys.

Main Methods:

• Utilized structural MRI scans from ten vervet monkeys across three time points.
• Employed symmetric diffeomorphic registration (SyN) to generate an unbiased population average template.
• Leveraged the rhesus INIA19 MRI template and NeuroMap label atlas for skull stripping, segmentation, and label map generation, creating a six-class TPM and a six-layer two-class normalization template.

Main Results:

• Achieved excellent performance in automated skull stripping, segmentation, and NeuroMap atlas labeling, registering 720 structures.
• Successfully demonstrated fully automated morphologic processing for all vervet MRI scans using the created template and TPM.
• The novel atlas generation method utilized high-dimensional image matching for accurate inter-species normalization.

Conclusions:

• The developed vervet MRI template, TPM, and atlas facilitate true fully automated structural MRI analyses.
• This resource provides the most detailed vervet label atlas available, significantly advancing morphometric research in this species.
• The methodology offers a robust approach for creating population-specific neuroimaging templates and atlases for other non-human primates.