BigBrain
BigBrain is a freely accessible high-resolution 3D digital atlas of the human brain, released in June 2013 by a team of researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and the German Forschungszentrum Jülich as part of the European Human Brain Project.[1] The spatial resolution of the BigBrain atlas is 20 µm, much finer than the typical 1 mm resolution of other existing 3D models of the human brain such as the Allen Brain Atlas.
Acquisition
The atlas was created from the brain of an unidentified 65-year-old woman who died with no known brain pathology. Her brain was first scanned using an MRI machine in order to create an undistorted reference, then embedded in paraffin and sliced into 7,404 20 µm thick sections using a microtome. After each slice was removed, the uncut face was photographed in order to provide an additional reference for removing distortion. The brain sections were placed on large glass slides and then stained using the Nissl method, a process that causes the grey matter in the brain to be darkly stained while leaving the white matter uncolored. (More precisely, the Nissl process causes the nucleus of each brain cell to be stained as a dark dot.) The stained sections were scanned and digitized using a flatbed scanner, creating a one terabyte raw record.[2] The atlas took five years to complete.[3]
Image processing
The resulting digital images were then processed by human operators to remove artifacts, and by software to align them with the reference images and with neighboring sections, thereby correcting distortions that inevitably arise during histological processing. The corrected data was then assembled into a three-dimensional computer model with a spatial resolution of 20 µm.[2] The entire process took about 1,000 hours of labor.[4] The database for the atlas is accessible on the web at https://bigbrain.loris.ca/main.php Announced plans include mapping additional brains and providing tools to allow brain scans from medical patients to be aligned to the BigBrain structure.
See also
Notes and references
- ↑ Amunts K, Lepage C, Borgeat L, et al. (2013). "BigBrain: an ultrahigh-resolution 3D human brain model". Science 340 (6139): 1472–1475. doi:10.1126/science.1235381.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Science podcast transcript" (PDF). June 21, 2013. Retrieved June 21, 2013.
- ↑ Healy, Melissa. (2013, June 20) 'Scientists create detailed 3-D model of human brain,' Los Angeles Times http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/20/science/la-sci-big-brain-20130621 Retrieved 19 Oct 2013.
- ↑ Tanya Lewis (June 20, 2013). "3D Map Reveals Human Brain in Greatest Detail Ever". LiveScience.com. Retrieved July 19, 2013.