Dear Xavier,
My colleagues and I recently made a composite elderly
T1-weighted MR image template that you might like to try out.
It's a nonlinear average, with a reasonably well-resolved cortex,
made by driving multiple scans into a group average shape,
using continuum-mechanical warping, before voxelwise intensity
averaging.
We routinely use the template to help in analyzing data from elderly
patients because it reflects some of the atrophy and ventricular
enlargement seen in elderly populations, and should approximate the
average brain shape more closely than the young normal templates.
If you would like to try it, its construction is described in a brief
paper in this
month's Human Brain Mapping, 9(2):81-92:
http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/texas99.html
and it can be downloaded (in .mnc or .img, .hdr format) by anonymous FTP
from:
ftp ftp.loni.ucla.edu
cd /people/Thompson/TEMPLATE/IMAGE
(There are also various average anatomical models in the template
coordinate system.
In case they might be of any use, they are in:
cd /people/Thompson/TEMPLATE/MODELS
-- just see the README.txt in there).
I hope this helps! All the best -- Paul
--
Paul Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Neurology, Dept. Neurology
UCLA Lab of Neuro-Imaging, Brain Mapping Division & Brain Research
Institute
710 Westwood Plaza, 4238 Reed Neurology
CHS-UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1769, USA
[log in to unmask]
http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/thompson.html
http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/thompson_pubs.html
Xavier Chitnis wrote:
>Dear All,
>
>We are planning a study involving older subjects (aged 60+). We are not
>sure whether the templates in SPM99 would be suitable for this sort of
>study, as they may not really reflect our subjects' brains. I was
wondering
>whether anyone has a T1-weighted template image for older subjects?
>Alternatively, is it possible to make our own template within SPM?
>
>Many thanks
>
>Xavier
>
>Xavier Chitnis
>Section of Cognitive Psychopharmacology
>Dept. of Psychological Medicine
>Institute of Psychiatry
>De Crespigny Park
>London, SE5 8AF.
>Tel: 0171 919 3977
>Pager: 07669 028 121
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