The functional organization of the cerebellum is reflected in large part by the unique afferent and efferent connectivity of the individual cerebellar lobules. This functional diversity on a relatively small spatial scale makes accurate localization methods for human functional imaging and anatomical patient-based research indispensable. Here we present a probabilistic atlas of the cerebellar lobules in the anatomical space defined by the MNI152 template. We separately masked the lobules on T1-weighted MRI scans (1 mm isotropic resolution) of 20 healthy young participants (10 male, 10 female, average age 23.7 yrs). These cerebella were then aligned to the standard or non-linear version of the whole-brain MNI152 template using a number of commonly used normalization algorithms, or to a previously published cerebellum-only template (Diedrichsen, J., 2006. A spatially unbiased atlas template of the human cerebellum. NeuroImage 33, 127-138.). The resulting average overlap was higher for the cerebellum-only template than for any of the whole-brain normalization methods. The probabilistic maps allow for the valid assignment of functional activations to specific cerebellar lobules, while providing a quantitative measure of the uncertainty of such assignments. Furthermore, maximum probability maps derived from these atlases can be used to define regions of interest (ROIs) in functional neuroimaging and neuroanatomical research. The atlas, made freely available online, is compatible with a number of widely used analysis packages.
Pubmed ID: 19457380 RIS Download
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Software library of image analysis and statistical tools for fMRI, MRI and DTI brain imaging data. Include registration, atlases, diffusion MRI tools for parameter reconstruction and probabilistic taractography, and viewer. Several brain atlases, integrated into FSLView and Featquery, allow viewing of structural and cytoarchitectonic standard space labels and probability maps for cortical and subcortical structures and white matter tracts. Includes Harvard-Oxford cortical and subcortical structural atlases, Julich histological atlas, JHU DTI-based white-matter atlases, Oxford thalamic connectivity atlas, Talairach atlas, MNI structural atlas, and Cerebellum atlas.
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