• The Magazine of the IEIE
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• v.36 no.11
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• pp.66-82
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• 2009

Probabilistic atlases for the human brain structure are more suitable than single brain atlases for representing population anatomy. In this study, we hypothesized the group-specific probabilistic atlas for accurate characteristic feature coding. Our proposed method for a new group comparison study, using a subpopulation specific probabilistic atlas, was based on this hypothesis. A knowledge-based automatic labeling technique using nonlinear registration was applied to encode group-specific regional probabilistic information. Direct atlas-based comparison using volume counting above the probability threshold, distance measurement and correlation analysis were performed based on the probabilistic atlas. Here, we applied this method for comparison between Korean and occidental groups. The results showed that this method could provide simple but intuitive regions of interest-based group analysis for the entire cortex area.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.9-16
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• 2005

One of the most important roles of a brain atlas is providing a spatial reference system in which multiple images can be interpreted in a consistent way. The brain atlase based on Western populations such as the International Consortium for Brain Mapping's 452 T-1 Weighted Average Atlas was widely used; however, they may not be the optimal choice for use with brain images from other ethnic groups, because structural differences between occidental and oriental brains have been reported. Therefore, in this study, we created an average brain atlas from 100 healthy Koreans (100 cases (M/F=53/47), 39.0±17.0 years). The purpose of this study was to make a Korean average-brain atlas and to measure its differences from a widely accepted average brain atlas built on an occidental population. The average brain atlas for Koreans was developed using widely accepted tools and procedures. The comparison between the Korean and occidental averages was performed using tissue probability maps and a registration tool, and it was shown that the global pattern of differences between the two average brains found in this work agreed with previously reported differences: Korean brains are wider and shorter in size, and smaller in volume, yet no hemispheric volume asymmetry was found.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.129-132
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• 2005

It is one of the most important issues to determine a target brain image that gives a common coordinate system for a constructing population-based brain atlas. The purpose of this study is to provide a simple and reliable procedure that determines the target brain image among the group based on the inherent structural information of three-dimensional magnetic resonance (MR) images. It uses only 11 lines defined automatically as a feature vector representing structural variations based on the Talairach coordinate system. Average characteristic vector of the group and the difference vectors of each one from the average vector were obtained. Finally, the individual data that had the minimum difference vector was determined as the target. We determined the target brain image by both our algorithm and conventional visual inspection for 20 healthy young volunteers. Eighteen fiducial points were marked independently for each data to evaluate the similarity. Target brain image obtained by our algorithm showed the best result, and the visual inspection determined the second one. We concluded that our method could be used to determine an appropriate target brain image in constructing brain atlases such as disease-specific ones.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.162-170
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• 2003

The probabilistic anatomical maps are used to localize the functional neuro-images and morphological variability. The quantitative indicator is very important to inquire the anatomical position of an activated legion because functional image data has the low-resolution nature and no inherent anatomical information. Although previously developed MNI probabilistic anatomical map was enough to localize the data, it was not suitable for the Korean brains because of the morphological difference between Occidental and Oriental. In this study, we develop a probabilistic anatomical map for Korean normal brain. Normal 75 blains of T1-weighted spoiled gradient echo magnetic resonance images were acquired on a 1.5-T GESIGNA scanner. Then, a standard brain is selected in the group through a clinician searches a brain of the average property in the Talairach coordinate system. With the standard brain, an anatomist delineates 89 regions of interest (ROI) parcellating cortical and subcortical areas. The parcellated ROIs of the standard are warped and overlapped into each brain by maximizing intensity similarity. And every brain is automatically labeledwith the registered ROIs. Each of the same-labeled region is linearly normalize to the standard brain, and the occurrence of each legion is counted. Finally, 89 probabilistic ROI volumes are generated. This paper presents a probabilistic anatomical map for localizing the functional and structural analysis of Korean normal brain. In the future, we'll develop the group specific probabilistic anatomical maps of OCD and schizophrenia disease.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.323-328
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• 2004

The development of group-specific tissue probability maps (TPM) provides a priori knowledge for better result of cerebral tissue classification with regard to the inter-ethnic differences of inter-subject variability. We present sequential procedures of group-specific TPM and evaluate the age effects in the structural differences of TPM. We investigated 100 healthy volunteers with high resolution MRI scalming. The subjects were classified into young (60, 25.92+4.58) and old groups (40, 58.83${\pm}$8.10) according to the age. To avoid any bias from random selected single subject and improve registration robustness, average atlas as target for TPM was constructed from skull-stripped whole data using linear and nonlinear registration of AIR. Each subject was segmented into binary images of gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid using fuzzy clustering and normalized into the space of average atlas. The probability images were the means of these binary images, and contained values in the range of zero to one. A TPM of a given tissue is a spatial probability distribution representing a certain subject population. In the spatial distribution of tissue probability according to the threshold of probability, the old group exhibited enlarged ventricles and overall GM atrophy as age-specific changes, compared to the young group. Our results are generally consistent with the few published studies on age differences in the brain morphology. The more similar the morphology of the subject is to the average of the population represented by the TPM, the better the entire classification procedure should work. Therefore, we suggest that group-specific TPM should be used as a priori information for the cerebral tissue classification.