In vivo structural MRI-based atlas of human thalamic nuclei

Thalamic nuclei play critical roles in regulation of neurological functions like sleep and wakefulness. They are increasingly implicated in neurodegenerative and neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis and essential tremor. However, segmentation of thalamic nuclei is difficult due to their poor visibility in conventional MRI scans. Sophisticated methods have been proposed which require specialized MRI acquisitions and complex post processing. There are very few digital MRI thalamic atlases and they have been constructed using a small number of post-mortem brains. The goal of this work is the development of a structural thalamic atlas at high spatial resolution based on manual segmentation of 20 subjects that include healthy subjects and patients with multiple-sclerosis. Using data analysis from healthy subjects as well as patients with multiple-sclerosis and essential tremor and at 3T and 7T MRI, we demonstrate the utility of this atlas to provide fast and accurate segmentation of thalamic nuclei when only conventional T1 weighted images are available.

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