Digital brain atlases for biomedicine

The technology and challenges of constructing digital brain atlases and some of their most promising applications in biomedicine have been introduced. Same cartographic principles that is used in mapmaking can be applied to the construction of referential coordinate systems of neuroanatomy and brain atlases. A pictorial representation of the brain is required over which a coordinate parameterization must be specified enabling one to locate positions in the picture and finally label these according to standard anatomical nomenclature. How best to summarize group data on neuroanatomy and relating these to new instances of individuals has been a challenge. Also, the processing of unique data types with special characteristics, special populations with significantly altered neuroanatomic appearance, as well as their combination with complementary information from other modalities to support multivariate analysis continually introduce new challenges to the field. Though stormed with challenges, brain atlasing techniques are considered as an essential tool for studying systematic patterns in the way neurological diseases affect the brain. The technology also advances understanding of the genetic bases for health and disease. Overall, the atlases promise to implement a flexible means to store and access diverse neuroscientific information, enable model-based methodologies to extract such information, and facilitate novel multivariate correlative studies, opening hitherto unexplored avenues of neuroscience.