Novel Multimodal Atlas Template for Spatial Normalization of Whole-Brain Images of Newborns
Résumé
Due to the complications of the brain study in the first two years of life, the investigations conducted in the field of neonatal brain are limited. An efficient means for obtaining information about the neonatal brain is the brain template. In this paper, we represent the results of our research in the field of MR and CT atlas templates. At first, we construct a new MR atlas by utilizing a set of high-resolution Tl-weighted MR images captured from a group of newborns with the gestational ages of 39 to 42 weeks at the examination date. Afterwards, we construct an original CT template, which is practically consistent with the MR atlas, by utilizing a set of high-resolution CT images captured from a group of newborns with the identical gestational ages. In spite of multifarious clinical applications, no modern CT template had been proposed to facilitate the normalization of neonatal CT images before we concentrated on providing the neonatal CT atlas. The developed atlases are evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively, for instance through the visual inspection and assessment of the anatomical local deviations. At the presence of both MR and CT modalities, further improvement could be attained in the medical diagnoses by the simultaneous utilization of the presented templates. (C) 2016 AGBM. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.