标题： 人类丘脑核的概率图谱，结合离体MRI和组织学 显示英文标题

标题： A probabilistic atlas of the human thalamic nuclei combining ex vivo MRI and histology

摘要： 人类丘脑是一个由众多高度特异的核团组成的脑结构。由于这些核团已知具有不同的功能，并且与大脑皮层的不同区域相连，因此对于神经影像学界来说，使用MRI在活体中研究它们的体积、形状和连接性具有重要意义。在本研究中，我们展示了一个基于离体脑MRI扫描和组织学数据构建的丘脑核团的概率图谱，以及该图谱在活体MRI分割中的应用。该图谱是通过在12个完整丘脑的连续组织切片上手动勾画26个丘脑核团，并结合39名受试者活体脑MRI数据中对整个丘脑及周围结构（尾状核、壳核、海马等）的手动分割而构建的。组织学数据和相应手动分割的三维结构是利用离体MRI作为参考框架，以及在切片过程中获取的块面照片堆栈作为中间目标来恢复的。该图谱被编码为自适应四面体网格，在代表性核团的体积方面与之前的丘脑组织学研究有良好的一致性。当应用于使用贝叶斯推理的活体扫描分割时，该图谱表现出优异的测试-再测可靠性，对输入MRI对比度变化的鲁棒性，以及在阿尔茨海默病患者中检测不同丘脑效应的能力。概率图谱和配套的分割工具作为神经影像软件包FreeSurfer的一部分公开可用。 显示英文摘要

摘要： The human thalamus is a brain structure that comprises numerous, highly specific nuclei. Since these nuclei are known to have different functions and to be connected to different areas of the cerebral cortex, it is of great interest for the neuroimaging community to study their volume, shape and connectivity in vivo with MRI. In this study, we present a probabilistic atlas of the thalamic nuclei built using ex vivo brain MRI scans and histological data, as well as the application of the atlas to in vivo MRI segmentation. The atlas was built using manual delineation of 26 thalamic nuclei on the serial histology of 12 whole thalami from six autopsy samples, combined with manual segmentations of the whole thalamus and surrounding structures (caudate, putamen, hippocampus, etc.) made on in vivo brain MR data from 39 subjects. The 3D structure of the histological data and corresponding manual segmentations was recovered using the ex vivo MRI as reference frame, and stacks of blockface photographs acquired during the sectioning as intermediate target. The atlas, which was encoded as an adaptive tetrahedral mesh, shows a good agreement with with previous histological studies of the thalamus in terms of volumes of representative nuclei. When applied to segmentation of in vivo scans using Bayesian inference, the atlas shows excellent test-retest reliability, robustness to changes in input MRI contrast, and ability to detect differential thalamic effects in subjects with Alzheimer's disease. The probabilistic atlas and companion segmentation tool are publicly available as part of the neuroimaging package FreeSurfer.