Scientists have developed structural brain atlases for the Chinese pediatric population, offering a basic tool for future studies on Chinese children’s brain development.
In magnetic resonance (MR) imaging studies of child’s brain development, structural brain atlases usually serve as important references. However, the popular existing pediatric brain atlases are mostly based on MR images obtained from Caucasian populations and thus are not an accurate characterization of Chinese children’s brains due to differences in genetic and environmental factors.
Scientists from the Beijing Normal University have created a set of age-specific Chinese pediatric atlases based on high-quality MR images from 328 cognitively normal Chinese children aged between 6 and 12.
The brain atlases include sex-specific templates and multiple age-specific templates. They show dramatic anatomical differences in the bilateral frontal and parietal regions compared with the brain atlases based on Caucasian populations.
The brain atlases have been released online and researchers can download it for free. They may help reveal the Chinese children’s brain structure and functional development, providing a reference for neuroimaging studies on Chinese children with abnormal brain development such as autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
The research was published in the journal NeuroImage.