Digital Brain Atlases for Biomedicine [Life Sciences]

Spurred by the advent of in vivo imaging methods, computational neuroanatomy - in particular the development of brain atlases - has emerged over the last decade as a major discipline in neuroscience , engaging diverse fields such as computer science, mathematics, signal processing, and statistics. This new field is greatly advancing medical research, basic biological science, and clinical practice. An atlas may be used as an instance of anatomy upon which teaching or surgical planning is based, a reference frame for understanding the normal variation of anatomy, a coordinate system for functional localization studies, and a probabilistic space into which functional or structural features are mapped. Within the context of neuroinformatics, the atlas serves as the mechanism through which novel sources of spatially indexed or image-based information may be linked with other databases such that new relationships may be derived. In this article, we introduce the technology and challenges of constructing digital brain atlases and some of their most promising applications in biomedicine.