ICBM

The International Consortium for Brain Mapping (ICBM) began in 1992 with the aim of building a four-dimensional probabilistic atlas and reference system for the adult human brain. It was led by John Mazziotta at UCLA, with co-investigators at the Montreal Neurological Institute, the University of Texas at San Antonio and Juelich/Heinrich Heine University. The subject-level data that the consortium shares are archived on the LONI Image and Data Archive (IDA) at the University of Southern California, where researchers apply for access.

Composition

The IDA study record lists 853 subjects, all in a single normal control cohort, with a cross-sectional design and ages from 18 to 89. Of these, 850 have MRI, 327 diffusion imaging, 325 functional MRI, 320 MR angiography and 35 PET. Demographic and examination or assessment data are listed alongside the images. The record does not break the cohort down by sex or age group, and notes that the study investigators have restricted the information shown publicly.

The 2001 descriptor paper describes a much larger programme than what the IDA holds: a collection under way that was to include 7000 subjects aged 18 to 90, with 342 monozygotic and dizygotic twins, with DNA from 5800 of them, plus post-mortem tissue used to map microscopic cyto- and chemoarchitectural regions.

Acquisition

The public sources consulted give no scanner models, field strengths, sequence parameters or PET tracers for the data on the IDA, so none are listed in this entry.

Annotations

No manual image labels are described for the shared data. The consortium's population atlases and templates are distributed separately and are not part of this entry.

Known limitations

All subjects are healthy controls, so the data suit normative work rather than disease classification. Only modality counts and the age range are published for the IDA collection; sex, contrast combinations and site breakdowns are not available without access. Access requires an approved application under the ICBM Data Use Agreement.