Locus Coeruleus Atlas

Locus coeruleus is hypothesized to play a prominent role in maintaining cognitive reserve during aging and is believed to be one of the first structures to experience neuronal loss in Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. I used neuromelanin-sensitive images to create a locus coeruleus atlas and applied it to examine age-related microstructural changes. Details of the creation of this atlas and application can be found here and here.

Substantia Nigra Atlas

Substantia nigra pars compacta is a melanized gray matter structure. Some time back, we found that the substantia nigra seen in neuromelanin-sensitive (really MT images) was in a different spatial location than the substantia nigra seen in T2-weighted images (summary here). We also had a lot of legacy T2-weighted and diffusion data. I created an atlas of substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) to localize SNc in these data sets. Information regarding the creation of this atlas can be found here.

Dentate Nucleus Atlas

Quantitative susceptibility maps (QSM) show better contrast in dentate nucleus than T2*-weighted or susceptibility weighted images. Susceptibility maps from 38 healthy older adults were used to construct this of the dentate nucleus. Information regarding the creation of this atlas can be found here.