A computerized adjustable brain atlas

Abstract

A computerized brain atlas, adjustable to the patients anatomy, has been developed. It is primarily intended for use in positron emission tomography, but may also be employed in other fields utilizing neuro imaging, such as stereotactic surgery, transmission computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The atlas is based on anatomical information obtained from a digitized cryosectioned brain. It can be adjusted to fit a wide range of images from individual brains with normal anatomy. The corresponding transformation is chosen so that the modified atlas agrees with a set of CT or NMR images of the patient. The computerized atlas can be used to improve the quantification and evaluation of PET data by:

• - Aiding and improving the selection of regions of interests.

• - Facilitating comparisons of functional image data from different individuals or groups of individuals.

• - Facilitating the comparison of different examinations of the same patient, thus reducing the need of reproducible fixation systems.

• - Providing external a priori anatomical information to be used in the image reconstruction.

• - Improving the attenuation and scatter corrections.

• - Aiding in selecting a suitable patient orientation during the PET study.

By applying the inverse atlas transformation to PET data set it is possible to relate the PET information to the anatomy of the reference atlas. Thus reformatted PET data from different patients can be averaged, and averages from different categories of patients can be compared. This procedure will facilitate the identification of statistically significant differences in the PET information from different groups of patients.