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Open Imaging Index
MRI Brain

QTAB (ds004146)

Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain Project

Longitudinal brain MRI of same-age twins through early adolescence, collected to study genetic and environmental effects on brain development, puberty, cognition and mood. 417 Australian twins aged 9 to 14, 304 rescanned, in BIDS under CC0.

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Overview

The Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain (QTAB) project followed same-age twins from the Brisbane region through early adolescence to study genetic and environmental effects on brain development, puberty, cognition and mood. Its imaging data were released on OpenNeuro as ds004146 in June 2022 under a CC0 waiver, organised in BIDS. The twin design, with a shared family identifier, suits heritability analyses and longitudinal work on the developing brain.

Composition

The project recruited 422 twins from 211 families (206 twin pairs and 5 triplet sets, two of each trio taking part). Five did not enter the scanner, so the first session holds 417 participants aged 9 to 14, scanned between June 2017 and October 2019. A second session from November 2019 to January 2021 rescanned 304 of them (152 pairs) after 13 to 30 months. Children with serious medical, neurological or psychiatric conditions, including autism and ADHD, were excluded. The public participants table gives age in whole years, sex, handedness, family and protocol code.

Acquisition

All scans come from one 3T Siemens Prisma with a 64-channel coil at the University of Queensland Centre for Advanced Imaging. Each session included an MP2RAGE T1w (0.8 mm, with inversion images and a denoised uniform image), 3D T2w and FLAIR, two or three T2w TSE slabs over the hippocampus, SWI, four runs of multi-shell diffusion (b = 1000 and 3000), two resting-state fMRI runs and pseudo-continuous ASL. Session 2 added an emotional conflict task and a passive movie-watching task. Faces were removed from the 3D whole-brain images, and the defacing masks are included.

Annotations

There are no image labels. Derivatives hold visual quality ratings (pass, warn, fail) for the structural and TSE scans, diffusion motion and outlier estimates from MRtrix3, MRIQC metrics for fMRI and background-cleaned UNIT1 images.

Known limitations

  • Zygosity, exact age, cognition, mental health and other phenotypes are in a separate dataset that needs a signed data usage agreement; the open release has no zygosity labels.
  • Twins are not independent observations; analyses need to account for family structure.
  • T2w and FLAIR were skipped for some participants because of time limits. ASL and SWI were not quality checked.
  • The MP2RAGE sequence was reissued during session 2, which changes the background noise of the uniform image.
  • participants.tsv lists two participants aged 8 at session 1, while the paper gives a minimum age of 9.0.

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 417 subjects.

Sex

  • Female 202 48%
  • Male 215 52%

From participants.tsv of ds004146 snapshot 1.0.4 (CC0), counted per row

Contrast / sequence

Groups can overlap

  • T1-weighted 417 100%
  • Diffusion-weighted 415 100%
  • BOLD fMRI 413 99%
  • Arterial spin labeling 413 99%
  • Susceptibility-weighted 412 99%
  • FLAIR 410 98%
  • T2-weighted 408 98%

From File tree of ds004146 snapshot 1.0.4 (CC0), counted per subject and session from the NIfTI file names under sub-*

Age

mean 11.3 ± 1.4, range 9 to 14.4

0
100
200
300
332
0-910-19

From participants.tsv of ds004146 snapshot 1.0.4 (CC0), counted per row; Methods, QTAB Protocol and participants in Strike et al. 2023, The Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain Project, Scientific Data

Condition

Groups can overlap

  • Healthy control 417 100%

Methods, Recruitment of the QTAB cohort in Strike et al. 2023, The Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain Project, Scientific Data

Age by sex

Reported cross table. Missing cells were not published (fewer than 10 or not reported).

Female Male
  • 163
    10-19
    169
  • 39
    0-9
    46

From participants.tsv of ds004146 snapshot 1.0.4 (CC0), counted per row

Contrast combinations

How many subjects have exactly each set of contrasts.

T1wT2wFLAIRswidwiboldaslSubjects with exactly this set
404
4
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1

From File tree of ds004146 snapshot 1.0.4 (CC0), counted per subject and session from the NIfTI file names under sub-*

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
For Imaging data and participants.tsv on OpenNeuro

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 1.0.4 states "License" CC0. The non-imaging phenotypes (zygosity, birth details, cognition, mental health) are a separate restricted dataset that requires a data usage agreement and are not covered by this entry.

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

Strike LT, Hansell NK, Chuang KH, et al. The Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain Project, a longitudinal study of adolescent brain development. Scientific Data 10, 195 (2023). doi:10.1038/s41597-023-02038-w

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.