Tohoku normal Japanese brain database

The Tohoku normal Japanese brain database is a collection of in vivo brain MRI scans of healthy Japanese volunteers, assembled by a group at the Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer (IDAC), Tohoku University, in Sendai. Sato et al. (2003) describe it as a high-resolution neuroanatomy database meant as a reference for basic neuroscience, clinical diagnosis and the study of neuropsychiatric disorders. The authors used it to derive reference brains for each age and sex group of normal Japanese adults and to measure how gray and white matter volume change with age.

Composition

1,547 normal subjects between 16 and 79 years of age. According to the abstract, the paper reports reference brains per age and sex group, but the abstract gives no breakdown by sex or age band, and the full text was not checked.

Acquisition

The abstract does not name the scanner, field strength or sequences. The analysis relies on voxel-based morphometry of gray and white matter, which implies anatomical images suited to tissue segmentation, but the exact contrasts are not stated in the source used here.

Annotations

None are described. The derived outputs in the paper are age- and sex-specific reference brains and voxel-based morphometry results. In this cohort, gray matter volume fell significantly with age, and younger subjects had shorter, wider brains than older ones, which the authors read as a change across generations.

Known limitations

• No public release, website or data use terms were found. Any access would be at the discretion of the Tohoku University group.
• Only the abstract of the paper is openly readable. Demographic breakdowns, scanner details and the exact acquisition protocol are therefore missing from this entry.
• The population is a single national group from one research center, so reference values may not transfer to other populations.