Brain 1068 Image Analysis and Atlas Construction
Figure 17.1: Elements of a disease-specic atlas. This schematic shows the types of maps and models contained in a disease-specic brain atlas. This atlas [3235] represents an Alzheimers disease population. To construct the atlas, databases of structural imaging data are used to develop detailed models of cortical structure and anatomic subsystems. These models are statistically combined to create group average models that can be compared with a normal database. Patterns of variability, asymmetry, and disease-specic differences are also computed from the anatomic data. Specialized techniques create a well-resolved average image template for the patient population (Continuum-Mechanical Atlas, center right). This template provides a coordinate framework to link in vivo metabolic and functional data with ne-scale anatomy and biochemistry [24]. (For a color version of this Figure see Plate 26 in the color section of this book.)
Registration to an atlas 1069 17.1.6 Disease-specic atlases
Once built, population-based atlases can be stratied into subpopulations to reect the unique anatomy and physiology of a specic group. Atlases are being built to represent populations with Alzheimers disease (Fig. 17.1; [33, 35, 38]) and sc...
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