A new AI-assisted brain atlas that can help visualize the human brain in unprecedented detail has been developed by UCL researchers, in a major step forward for neuroscience and neuroimaging.
Published in Nature, the new study introduces NextBrain, an atlas of the entire adult human brain that can be used to analyze MRI scans of living patients in a matter of minutes and at a level of detail not possible until now.
AI was used to help align the microscope images and the MRI scans, accounting for the differences between the two techniques and ensuring that the pieces did not overlap or have gaps in between them.
A total of 333 brain regions were then labeled on the digital 3D models of each of the five brains.
The resulting atlas, which is an "average" of the five brain models, is generalizable to all adult humans—meaning it can be used to automatically infer detail from MRI scans of living or deceased subjects.
NextBrain was successfully tested on thousands of MRI datasets, demonstrating the ability to reliably identify brain regions across diverse imaging conditions and scanner types.
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