Toward the holistic, reference, and extendable atlas of the human brain, head, and neck

Abstract

Despite numerous efforts, a fairly complete (holistic) anatomical model of the whole, normal, adult human brain, which is required as the reference in brain studies and clinical applications, has not yet been constructed. Our ultimate objective is to build this kind of atlas from advanced in vivo imaging. This work presents the taxonomy of our currently developed brain atlases and addresses the design, content, functionality, and current results in the holistic atlas development as well as atlas usefulness and future directions. We have developed to date 35 commercial brain atlases (along with numerous research prototypes), licensed to 63 companies and institutions, and made available to medical societies, organizations, medical schools, and individuals. These atlases have been applied in education, research, and clinical applications. Hundreds of thousands of patients have been treated by using our atlases. Based on this experience, the first version of the holistic and reference atlas of the brain, head, and neck has been developed and made available. The atlas has been created from multispectral 3 and 7 Tesla and high-resolution CT in vivo scans. It is fully 3D, scalable, interactive, and highly detailed with about 3,000 labeled components. This atlas forms a foundation for the development of a multi-level molecular, cellular, anatomical, physiological, and behavioral brain atlas platform.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s40708-015-0012-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Human brain atlasing: past, present and future

“…The major components of this process are mathematical methods as well as computational methods and tools, addressed in an accompanying paper in this issue. 84 Several other components have already been addressed earlier, including the principles of atlas design, 15 atlas content, 15 functionality, 15 interaction, 90 software architecture, 63 aesthetic design 63 and validation of individual atlases. 63–70…”

“…For over two decades I developed with my R&D lab 35 brain atlases, licensed to 67 companies and institutions, and made available to medical societies, organisations, medical schools and individuals in about 100 countries. 15…”

“…17–20 The atlases developed by me so far, both commercial products and research prototypes, are grouped into three families, namely, derived from: Thieme's print materials, in-vivo imaging and population (including patient-specific) data, and their taxonomy is presented in Nowinski. 15 Technology-wise, two main generations of the atlases are distinguished: Cerefy (and pre-Cerefy) atlases and the Human Brain in Pieces.…”

Computational and mathematical methods in brain atlasing

“…1 My small-scale efforts from an R&D lab have resulted in the creation of brain atlases that are grouped in three families: namely, derived from print materials, created from multi-modal in-vivo imaging and population-based including patients' data. 2 Consequently, a variety of material sources has been employed for atlas construction.…”

“…1 My contribution to this field has been in creating adult human brain atlases in health and disease, and developing atlasbased applications in education, research and clinics. 1,2 Mathematical methods as well as computational methods and tools constitute a major component in the process of brain atlas building and developing atlas-assisted applications. The mathematical methods deal with problems in image segmentation, geometric modelling of the human body, physical modelling, atlas-to-scan registration, realistic visualisation, realtime interaction and dexterous and immersive virtual reality (VR).…”