Skip to content
Open Imaging Index
MRI Brain

BEAN Brain Morphometry and Diminished Growth

BrainMorphometry_DiminishedGrowth_BEANstudy_2021

Structural brain MRI of six-year-old children growing up in extreme poverty in Dhaka, Bangladesh, collected to relate brain size and shape to stunting and other signs of early malnutrition. Includes growth z-scores, socioeconomic measures and IQ.

Go to dataset Edit Report

Overview

This OpenNeuro release (ds003877) holds the structural MRI data behind a study of brain morphometry and early growth failure in children from an extremely poor urban neighbourhood of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The children belong to the Bangladesh Early Adversity Neuroimaging (BEAN) study, run by Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard and the icddr,b, which followed 260 children from infancy. The study asked whether stunting, underweight and wasting in the first three years relate to brain volume and cortical shape at about six years, and whether they link socioeconomic status to brain structure and IQ. The data are shared under a CC0 waiver. The README asks users to tell the study lead their research question and states that this does not affect access.

Composition

The release has 79 children (36 girls, 43 boys) aged 5.5 to 7 years at the scan. Of 81 children scanned, two were dropped for severe head motion. Each child has one T1-weighted image. The participants table gives sex, age at MRI in months, how often C-reactive protein was raised, height-for-age, weight-for-age and weight-for-height z-scores, head circumference at the scan, rescaled maternal education, log income-to-needs and full-scale IQ from the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence. By the paper's z-score cut-off of -2, 24 children were stunted, 18 underweight and 8 wasted. No child had a diagnosed neurological disease.

Acquisition

All scans come from one 3T Siemens MAGNETOM Verio with a 12-channel head coil at the National Institute of Neuroscience and Hospital in Dhaka. The T1-weighted image is a sagittal MPRAGE with 1 mm isotropic voxels (TR 2500 ms, TE 3.47 ms). Children were prepared with a cardboard mock scanner and practice at lying still. Growth measures were taken at 21, 30 and 36 months of age.

Known limitations

  • Single site and scanner, and a sample from one low-income urban area.
  • Functional and diffusion scans were acquired in the same sessions but are not part of this release.
  • No derivatives are included; the analysis code is in a separate GitHub repository named in the README.
  • Growth measures date from early childhood, years before the scan.

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 79 subjects.

Sex

  • Female 36 46%
  • Male 43 54%

Table 1 in Turesky et al. 2021, Brain morphometry and diminished physical growth in Bangladeshi children growing up in extreme poverty, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (PMC8605388, CC BY)

Contrast / sequence

Groups can overlap

  • T1-weighted 79 100%

From BIDS file tree of ds003877 (CC0), raw NIfTI files under sub-*/anat counted

Scanner vendor

  • Siemens Healthineers 79 100%

Section 2.5 in Turesky et al. 2021, Brain morphometry and diminished physical growth in Bangladeshi children growing up in extreme poverty, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (PMC8605388, CC BY)

Country

  • Bangladesh 79 100%

Section 2.1 in Turesky et al. 2021, Brain morphometry and diminished physical growth in Bangladeshi children growing up in extreme poverty, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (PMC8605388, CC BY)

Age

mean 6.7, median 6.9, range 5.5 to 7

0
20
40
60
79
0-9

Age_at_MRI_(months) in participants.tsv of ds003877 (CC0), counted per row; Age_at_MRI_(months) converted to years, Sex coded female=1, male=2; Table 1 in Turesky et al. 2021, Brain morphometry and diminished physical growth in Bangladeshi children growing up in extreme poverty, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (PMC8605388, CC BY)

Condition

Groups can overlap

  • Short stature 24 30%

Section 2.2 in Turesky et al. 2021, Brain morphometry and diminished physical growth in Bangladeshi children growing up in extreme poverty, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (PMC8605388, CC BY)

Field strength

  • 3 T 79 100%

Section 2.5 in Turesky et al. 2021, Brain morphometry and diminished physical growth in Bangladeshi children growing up in extreme poverty, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (PMC8605388, CC BY)

Contrast combinations

How many subjects have exactly each set of contrasts.

T1wSubjects with exactly this set
79

From BIDS file tree of ds003877 (CC0), raw NIfTI files under sub-*/anat counted

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
Open download

Download without an account

Access page

Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal

Public domain dedication. Do anything with the data, including commercial use, without asking and without having to give credit.

dataset_description.json of snapshot 1.2.0 states "License" CC0. The README asks users to tell Charles Nelson their research question and states that this has no bearing on access.

Original license text Version read: 1.0 Checked 2026-10-07

What you can do

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you can share

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you must do

  • No
  • Share alike No
  • No
  • No
  • Manuscript review No
  • Release code No
  • Return results No
  • Delete after use No

Limits

  • No
  • Location limits No

Citation

Turesky TK, Shama T, Kakon SH, Haque R, Islam N, Someshwar A, Gagoski B, Petri WA, Nelson CA, Gaab N. Brain morphometry and diminished physical growth in Bangladeshi children growing up in extreme poverty: a longitudinal study. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 52, 101029 (2021). doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2021.101029

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.