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Open Imaging Index
MRI Brain

QTIM (ds004169)

Queensland Twin IMaging (QTIM)

Brain MRI of twins and their siblings, collected to measure how strongly genes shape brain structure, function and connectivity in young people. 1,202 people aged 12 to 30 from Queensland, with test-retest and longitudinal subsamples, in BIDS under CC0.

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Overview

The Queensland Twin IMaging study scanned twins and their non-twin siblings in Queensland to measure how strongly genes shape brain structure, function and connectivity. The study was run by QIMR Berghofer and the University of Queensland. The data were released on OpenNeuro as ds004169 in 2022 under a CC0 waiver, with diffusion scans of the young adults added in snapshot 1.0.8 (July 2026). It suits heritability, test-retest and normative studies of the young brain.

Composition

Snapshot 1.0.8 holds 1,202 participants from 682 families (732 female, 470 male), aged 12 to 30 at the first scan. According to the dataset README, 1,026 are young adults aged 18 to 30; the others are adolescents scanned at about 12 or 16 years. Every participant has a T1-weighted scan, 1,195 have n-back and/or resting-state fMRI and 697 have diffusion imaging. A second session exists for 141 participants. The participants table flags 78 young adults rescanned after about 3.5 months for test-retest reliability and 62 adolescents rescanned about four years later. Derivatives include FreeSurfer 5.3 measures, hippocampal subfield volumes and MRIQC and DSI Studio quality metrics.

Acquisition

All scans come from one 4 T Bruker Medspec whole-body scanner; the image headers list Siemens as manufacturer. The T1w image is a 3D MPRAGE at 0.9 mm isotropic resolution. Resting-state fMRI uses gradient-echo EPI with a 2.1 s TR. The diffusion protocol of the young adults used 94 gradient directions at b = 1159 s/mm² plus 11 b0 images. Faces were removed from the T1w images, and the data are organized in BIDS.

Annotations

There are no image annotations. The participants table lists age, sex, handedness, a family identifier, the T1w orientation per session, the n-back timing version and the test-retest or longitudinal group.

Known limitations

  • Zygosity and other phenotypes are not in the open release. They need a data transfer agreement and ethics approval.
  • A scanner software upgrade changed the T1w protocol mid-study from coronal to sagittal acquisition with fewer slices. A vascular pulsation artefact varies with that orientation.
  • The first five n-back volumes precede the task and should be dropped; adolescents at 12 years had two n-back stimulus timings.
  • Twins and siblings are not independent samples; the family identifier must be used in any split.
  • All participants are right-handed, and the sample is about 61% female.

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 1,202 subjects.

Sex

  • Female 732 61%
  • Male 470 39%

sex in participants.tsv of ds004169 snapshot 1.0.8 (CC0), counted per row from the sex and age columns

Contrast / sequence

Groups can overlap

  • T1-weighted 1,202 100%
  • BOLD fMRI 1,195 99%
  • Diffusion-weighted 697 58%

anat/*_T1w.nii.gz, func/*_bold.nii.gz, dwi/*_dwi.nii.gz in File tree of ds004169 snapshot 1.0.8 (CC0), NIfTI files counted per subject, session and BIDS suffix

Age

mean 21.2 ± 4, median 21, range 12 to 30

0
200
400
600
800
878
10-1920-2930-39

age in participants.tsv of ds004169 snapshot 1.0.8 (CC0), counted per row from the sex and age columns

Field strength

  • 4 T 1,202 100%

MagneticFieldStrength in the JSON sidecars in File tree of ds004169 snapshot 1.0.8 (CC0), NIfTI files counted per subject, session and BIDS suffix

Age by sex

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

Female Male
  • 552
    20-29
    326
  • 179
    10-19
    144

sex, age in participants.tsv of ds004169 snapshot 1.0.8 (CC0), counted per row from the sex and age columns

Contrast combinations

How many subjects have exactly each set of contrasts.

T1wdwiboldSubjects with exactly this set
696
499
6
1

From File tree of ds004169 snapshot 1.0.8 (CC0), NIfTI files counted per subject, session and BIDS suffix

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 1.0.8 states "License" CC0. Zygosity and further phenotypes are not part of the release and need a data transfer agreement and ethics approval from QIMR Berghofer.

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, Blokland GAM, Hansell NK, Martin NG, Toga AW, Thompson PM, de Zubicaray GI, McMahon KL, Wright MJ. Queensland Twin IMaging (QTIM). OpenNeuro ds004169 (2022). doi:10.18112/openneuro.ds004169. The dataset asks to also cite Strike et al. 2019 (T1w), Blokland et al. 2011 (n-back), Sinclair et al. 2015 (rest) and Shen et al. 2014 (diffusion).

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.