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Open Imaging Index
MRI Brain

ABIDE I

Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange I

Resting-state fMRI and structural brain MRI of people with autism spectrum disorder and typical controls, pooled from 17 sites in the US and Europe to study functional connectivity in autism. 1,112 people aged 7 to 64 (539 with autism) with phenotypic data.

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Overview

ABIDE I was the first large open collection of brain MRI in autism. Seventeen sites in the US and Europe pooled resting-state fMRI and structural scans they had already acquired, together with diagnostic and phenotypic information, and released them through the 1000 Functional Connectomes Project / INDI in August 2012. It is widely used to study functional connectivity in autism and as a benchmark for classifying autism from brain scans.

Composition

The release holds 1,112 datasets: 539 from people with autism spectrum disorder and 573 from typical controls, aged roughly 7 to 64 years with a median of 14.7. The 17 sites contributed 20 samples, ranging from 27 to 184 people each. Every dataset has one resting-state fMRI run and one T1-weighted anatomical scan. Phenotypic data include diagnosis (autistic disorder, Asperger's or PDD-NOS), ADOS and ADI-R scores where available, IQ, handedness, medication and, for some sites, eye status during the rest scan.

Acquisition

Each site used its own scanner and protocol; the site profiles name Siemens (Allegra, Trio, Verio), Philips and GE systems. Resting-state instructions differed: some sites asked for eyes open with a fixation cross, others eyes closed. Most sites screened controls for psychiatric conditions and matched them to the autism group on age and sex at group level.

Annotations

There are no image labels. Diagnoses come from each site's clinical assessment, mostly based on DSM-IV-TR with ADOS and ADI-R.

Known limitations

  • Data were collected for different original studies, so inclusion criteria, age ranges and protocols vary strongly by site, and site effects are large.
  • The sample is mostly male; a quarter of sites excluded females by design.
  • Sex and detailed age distributions for the whole release are only available in the phenotypic file, which is distributed under the same non-commercial license after registration.
  • Some participants also appear in other repositories: site notes mention overlap with ADHD-200 (controls) and NDAR (some children with autism).

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 1,112 subjects.

Age

median 14.7, range 6.5 to 64

No age bins reported.

NYU site profile in ABIDE I page, FCP/INDI (summary and per-site profiles)

Condition

Groups can overlap

  • Healthy control 573 52%
  • Autism spectrum disorder 539 48%

From ABIDE I page, FCP/INDI (summary and per-site profiles)

Contrast / sequence

Groups can overlap

  • T1-weighted 1,112 100%
  • BOLD fMRI 1,112 100%

Abstract in Di Martino et al. 2014, Molecular Psychiatry

Contrast combinations

How many subjects have exactly each set of contrasts.

T1wboldSubjects with exactly this set
1,112

Abstract in Di Martino et al. 2014, Molecular Psychiatry

License and access

Our reading of the license, not legal advice. Before you use the data, read the original license and confirm that your use is allowed. We take no responsibility for how you use a dataset. Full disclaimer

Access
Free registration

Create an account and accept terms online

Access page

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

Older version of CC BY-NC-SA. Non-commercial use only, with credit. Anything you share that is built on the data must use the same license.

The ABIDE page states that usage is unrestricted for non-commercial research, asks users to name the datasets used and acknowledge their funding, and requires registration with NITRC and INDI before download.

Original license text Version read: 3.0 Checked 2026-10-07

What you can do

  • No
  • Not stated
  • Conditional
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you can share

  • Conditional
  • Conditional
  • Conditional

What you must do

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • No
  • No
  • Manuscript review No
  • Release code No
  • Return results No
  • Delete after use No

Limits

  • No
  • Location limits No

Citation

Di Martino A, Yan CG, Li Q, et al. The autism brain imaging data exchange: towards a large-scale evaluation of the intrinsic brain architecture in autism. Molecular Psychiatry 19(6):659-667 (2014). doi:10.1038/mp.2013.78

Sources

Every number on this page comes from one of these documents. Each chart names the table or page it is taken from. The raw numbers are in stats.csv.