Towards construction of an ideal stereotactic brain atlas

Background. The role of the brain atlas is changing in many aspects with the advancements in stereotactic and functional neurosurgery. Therefore, there is a critical need to construct a new atlas. This paper addresses the definition and construction of an atlas, ideal (in our opinion) for stereotactic and functional neurosurgery. The essence of the new atlas is not only its population-based structural and functional content, but also its continuous "self-updatability" with the new clinical results obtained. Method. The ideal atlas defined here contains four major components: brain models, knowledge database, tools, and clinical results. Towards its creation, a multi-atlas is proposed. The construction of the initial version of the multi-atlas is detailed with the probabilistic functional atlas (PFA), interpolated Talairach-Tournoux atlas, and enhanced Schaltenbrand-Wahren atlas. These atlases are put in a spatial register by matching their AC-PC distances and heights of the thalamus; the Schaltenbrand coronal and sagittal microseries are scaled laterally to match the target structure centroids with the locations of the best targets of the PFA. Findings. Construction of an initial version of the ideal stereotactic atlas is feasible at present from the available resources. To achieve that, our three atlases (PFA, Talairach and Schaltenbrand) are enhanced and combined together. A single lateral scaling factor per target structure is feasible to co-register the Schaltenbrand atlas with PFA in four situations (compensated against the third ventricle, non-compensated, bilateral, and non-bilateral). The STN has to be stretched by 18% more than the VIM on the Schaltenbrand coronal microseries, and the VIM has to be compressed by 13% less than the STN on the Schaltenbrand sagittal microseries. Conclusion. The new multi-atlas can potentially be more useful than the currently employed atlases and will facilitate further development of the ideal atlas for stereotactic and functional neurosurgery.