The objective of this project was to produce a completely space-filling atlas of a single MRI volume, where every voxel could be identified as part of brain or extra-brain structure. This atlas would serve as a template model for automatic segmentation of other MRI volumes and in the creation of a three dimensional probabalistic atlas of the human brain.
The creation of this atlas was inspired by a proposal put forth by the International Consortium of Brain Mapping (ICBM). The specific goal of the ICBM project is the development of a population-based digital probabilistic atlas of the human brain with a reference system in stereotaxic space. In order to produce such an atlas, a starting template was needed. Other than the advantage of being a teaching tool for normal anatomy, the probabilistic atlas may also be used for the localization of activation sites in functional studies and as a standard against which pathological brains can be analyzed.
Below are some images from this atlas: