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Open Imaging Index
MRI Brain

Nigerian Brains MRI

A labeled Clinical-MRI dataset of Nigerian brains

Clinical-quality structural brain MRI (T1w, T2w, FLAIR) of 88 Nigerian adults and adolescents: 31 with dementia, 22 with Parkinson's disease and 35 controls, from 0.3 T and 1.5 T scanners at three diagnostic centers, brain-extracted and shared in BIDS on brainlife.io.

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Overview

The Nigerian Brains MRI dataset is a set of routine clinical brain MRI scans from people living in Nigeria, collected by researchers at the University of Port Harcourt and processed and published with the Pestilli lab at the University of Texas at Austin on the brainlife.io platform. The authors describe it as the first shared MRI dataset from Nigeria. It is meant for training local clinicians and researchers and for building methods that cope with low field strength and unstandardized protocols. A first release with 51 subjects (brainlife.pub.45) appeared in 2023; this entry follows the 88-subject release brainlife.pub.61.

Composition

88 participants: 31 with age-related dementia (mean age 65.3 years), 22 with Parkinson's disease (mean 61.1) and 35 healthy controls (mean 34.1, range 12 to 75). 35 are female and 53 male. Patients were recruited from the South-South and North-Central regions; all controls come from the South-South. The release holds 761 anatomical images (442 T1w, 177 of them after gadolinium, 205 T2w and 114 FLAIR), plus 26 diffusion images that the paper does not describe. 64 participants have a contrast-enhanced T1w and 80 a FLAIR.

Acquisition

Three diagnostic centers: two in Port Harcourt and one in Abuja. Scanners were a GE Signa 1.5 T, a Toshiba 1.5 T and a Hitachi AIRIS II 0.3 T, each with a 12-channel head coil. Images are 2D acquisitions with one high-resolution plane and up to two low-resolution planes, so the number of images per person varies; some people have repeated runs. DICOMs were converted to BIDS with ezBIDS.

Annotations

The labels are the clinical group of each participant. Brain masks were generated with FSL BET and corrected by hand in FSLeyes, then applied to the images; they are published separately (brainlife.pub.55). MRIQC quality metrics are included for T1w and T2w.

Known limitations

  • Clinical scans without a research protocol, partly at 0.3 T, so quality and resolution vary widely.
  • Only brain-extracted images are released; the full head is not available.
  • Controls are much younger than the patient groups and come from one region.
  • Access needs a signed data use agreement whose text is not published, although the brainlife.io pages show CC BY 4.0.

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 88 subjects.

Sex

  • Female 35 40%
  • Male 53 60%

Contrast / sequence

subjects, values can overlap

  • FLAIR 80 91%
  • T1-weighted, contrast enhanced 64 73%

Condition

subjects, values can overlap

  • Healthy control 35 40%
  • Dementia 31 35%
  • Parkinson's disease 22 25%

Country

subjects

  • Nigeria 88 100%

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
Signed agreement

Sign a data use agreement, often reviewed by the provider

Access page

Different parts of the data carry different licenses. The summary on the right shows the most restrictive answer per rule.

For All images and brain masks, released after the user signs the data use agreement.

Data Use Agreement for the labeled Clinical-MRI dataset of Nigerian brains

Access is controlled: users are identified and authenticated and must sign a legally binding data use agreement before they receive the data, taking on responsibilities and liabilities as data controllers. The agreement text itself is not published, so every other rule is unspecified.

The agreement text is not published. Its terms are known only from the Usage Notes of the data descriptor.

Original license text Version read: Agreement text not published. Terms as described in the Usage Notes of Wogu et al. 2025, read 2026-10-08 Checked 2026-10-08

What you can do

  • Commercial use Not stated
  • Train ML models Not stated
  • Create derived data Not stated
  • Publish results Not stated

What you can share

  • Share the data Not stated
  • Share derived data Not stated
  • Share trained models Not stated

What you must do

  • Cite or credit Not stated
  • Share alike Not stated
  • Yes
  • Ethics approval Not stated
  • Manuscript review Not stated
  • Release code Not stated
  • Return results Not stated
  • Delete after use Not stated

Limits

  • No re-identification Not stated
  • Location limits Not stated
For All images, as labelled on the brainlife.io publication pages (pub.61, and the brain masks in pub.55).

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Use, share and adapt the data for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you credit the creators.

Original license text Version read: 4.0 Checked 2026-10-07

What you can do

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you can share

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you must do

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

Limits

  • No
  • Location limits No

Citation

Wogu E, Filima P, Caron B, et al. A labeled Clinical-MRI dataset of Nigerian brains. Scientific Data 12, 518 (2025). doi:10.1038/s41597-025-04743-0

All numbers

Every number on this page, as stored in stats.csv, with its source.

MeasureBreakdownValueSource
Subjectstotal 88wogu2025
Methods, Study participants
Subjectscountry=NG
all participants reside in Nigeria
88wogu2025
Methods, Study participants
Subjectscondition=dementia 31wogu2025
Table 2
Subjectscondition=parkinsons 22wogu2025
Table 2
Subjectscondition=healthy 35wogu2025
Table 2
Subjectssex=female
sum of the three disjoint groups: 11 control, 8 PD, 16 dementia
35wogu2025
Table 2
Subjectssex=male
sum of the three disjoint groups: 24 control, 14 PD, 15 dementia
53wogu2025
Table 2
Subjectscondition=healthy;sex=female 11wogu2025
Table 2
Subjectscondition=healthy;sex=male 24wogu2025
Table 2
Subjectscondition=parkinsons;sex=female 8wogu2025
Table 2
Subjectscondition=parkinsons;sex=male 14wogu2025
Table 2
Subjectscondition=dementia;sex=female 16wogu2025
Table 2
Subjectscondition=dementia;sex=male 15wogu2025
Table 2
Subjectscontrast=FLAIR 80wogu2025
Methods, Neuroimaging parameters
Subjectscontrast=T1w_ce
gadolinium-enhanced T1w
64wogu2025
Methods, Neuroimaging parameters
Scanstotal
anatomical sequences (T1w, T2w, FLAIR)
761wogu2025
Methods, Study participants
Scanscontrast=T1w
sum of all T1w rows, including 177 gadolinium-enhanced images; matches the brainlife.io release count
442wogu2025
Table 4
Scanscontrast=T1w_ce
sum of the ce-gadolinium rows
177wogu2025
Table 4
Scanscontrast=T2w
sum of all T2w rows; matches the brainlife.io release count
205wogu2025
Table 4
Scanscontrast=FLAIR
sum of all FLAIR rows; matches the brainlife.io release count
114wogu2025
Table 4
Scanscontrast=dwi
listed in the release but not described in the data descriptor
26brainlife-pub61
release 1, neuro/dwi set
Minimum agetotal
lowest of the three group minimums (control group)
12wogu2025
Table 2
Maximum agetotal
highest of the three group maximums (dementia group)
86wogu2025
Table 2
Mean agecondition=healthy 34.1wogu2025
Table 2
Age SDcondition=healthy 12.8wogu2025
Table 2
Minimum agecondition=healthy 12wogu2025
Table 2
Maximum agecondition=healthy 75wogu2025
Table 2
Mean agecondition=parkinsons 61.1wogu2025
Table 2
Age SDcondition=parkinsons 14.6wogu2025
Table 2
Minimum agecondition=parkinsons 36wogu2025
Table 2
Maximum agecondition=parkinsons 79wogu2025
Table 2
Mean agecondition=dementia 65.3wogu2025
Table 2
Age SDcondition=dementia 14.1wogu2025
Table 2
Minimum agecondition=dementia 36wogu2025
Table 2
Maximum agecondition=dementia 86wogu2025
Table 2

Sources

The keys used in the table above.