Age-Specific MRI Templates for Pediatric Neuroimaging

Abstract

This study created a database of pediatric age-specific magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain templates for normalization and segmentation. Participants included children from 4.5 through 19.5 years, totaling 823 scans from 494 subjects. Open-source processing programs (FMRIB Software Library, Statistical Parametric Mapping, Advanced Normalization Tools [ANTS]) constructed head, brain, and segmentation templates in 6-month intervals. The tissue classification (white matter [WM], gray matter [GM], cerebrospinal fluid) showed changes over age similar to previous reports. A volumetric analysis of age-related changes in WM and GM based on these templates showed expected increase/decrease pattern in GM and an increase in WM over the sampled ages. This database is available for use for neuroimaging studies (http://jerlab.psych.sc.edu/neurodevelopmentalmridatabase).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A listing of the participating sites and a complete listing of the study investigators can be found at http://www.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/nihpd/info/participating_centers.html.

This work was supported by the NIH grant to J. E. R., #R37 HD18942, and by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (Contracts N01-HD02-3343, N01-MH9-0002, and N01-NS-9-2314, -2315, -2316, -2317, -2319 and -2320) to C. R. A.