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Open Imaging Index
MRI Brain

Ultra-Low-Field MRI Brain Templates

Population-based Brain Templates for Ultra-Low-Field MRI

Portable ultra-low-field brain MRI (T1- and T2-weighted, 64 mT) of healthy adults across the lifespan, averaged into age-group templates for spatial normalization. Only the templates, their segmentations and regional volumes are released; the scans of the 100 participants are not.

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Overview

A set of brain templates built from portable ultra-low-field MRI at 64 mT, made at Monash Biomedical Imaging in Melbourne. Templates in common use, such as MNI152, come from 1.5 T and 3 T scans, and their contrast and resolution differ from what a 64 mT point-of-care scanner produces. The authors scanned 100 healthy adults, registered the scans to one another and averaged them into T1- and T2-weighted reference spaces for three age groups. The templates, SynthSeg label maps of each template and a table of regional volumes are on Zenodo under CC BY 4.0, and the pipeline code is on GitHub under the MIT License. The individual scans are not released.

Composition

100 adults without known neurological or psychiatric disorders, 44 men and 56 women, each with a T1- and a T2-weighted scan. They are split into a young group aged 18 to 40 (47 people), a middle group aged 41 to 60 (27) and an older group aged 61 to 81 (26); the older group was stretched by one year to keep a single 81-year-old participant. The Zenodo record contains six template volumes (two contrasts by three age groups), a segmentation of each with 33 regions and a merged version with 18 bilateral regions, and one CSV with the regional volumes of all six templates.

Acquisition

All scans come from a Hyperfine Swoop 64 mT permanent-magnet scanner with an 8-channel head coil, across vendor software versions 8.4.1, 8.5.1 and 8.6.0. T1-weighted images used an axial inversion recovery spin-echo sequence (TR 1500 ms, TE 6 ms, TI 300 ms) and T2-weighted images an axial spin-echo sequence (TR 2000 ms, TE 203.6 ms), both with 5 mm slices and the vendor's deep learning reconstruction. Processing used FSL FAST bias correction, FSL BET skull stripping, resampling to 1 mm isotropic voxels, ANTs affine registration and five rounds of SyN nonlinear registration with averaging.

Annotations

The template label maps were produced automatically with SynthSeg+. There are no manual annotations.

Known limitations

  • Only group averages are shared; subject-level images, ages and sexes are not available.
  • Single scanner model and site, so the templates fit Hyperfine Swoop data best.
  • 5 mm slices make the source data strongly anisotropic, which resampling does not undo.
  • The age groups are uneven, with fewer people in the middle and older groups.

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 100 subjects.

Sex

  • Female 56 56%
  • Male 44 44%

Table 1 in Islam et al. 2026, Scientific Data, data descriptor

Contrast / sequence

Groups can overlap

  • T1-weighted 100 100%
  • T2-weighted 100 100%

Methods: Participants and Dataset Composition in Islam et al. 2026, Scientific Data, data descriptor

Scanner vendor

  • Hyperfine 100 100%

Methods: MRI Acquisition in Islam et al. 2026, Scientific Data, data descriptor

Country

  • Australia 100 100%

Methods: Participants and Dataset Composition in Islam et al. 2026, Scientific Data, data descriptor

Age

0
10
20
30
40
47
18-4041-6061-81

Table 1 in Islam et al. 2026, Scientific Data, data descriptor

Condition

Groups can overlap

  • Healthy control 100 100%

Methods: Participants and Dataset Composition in Islam et al. 2026, Scientific Data, data descriptor

Field strength

  • 0.064 T 100 100%

Methods: MRI Acquisition in Islam et al. 2026, Scientific Data, data descriptor

Age by sex

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

Female Male
  • 14
    61-81
    12
  • 15
    41-60
    12
  • 27
    18-40
    20

Table 1 in Islam et al. 2026, Scientific Data, data descriptor

Contrast combinations

How many subjects have exactly each set of contrasts.

T1wT2wSubjects with exactly this set
100

Methods: Participants and Dataset Composition in Islam et al. 2026, Scientific Data, data descriptor

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
Not shared

The data are not available outside the institution or study that holds them

The Zenodo record holds derived files only: T1- and T2-weighted templates for the young, middle and older age groups, SynthSeg segmentations of each template (33 regions and 18 merged bilateral regions) and a CSV of regional template volumes, openly downloadable under CC BY 4.0. The paper describes these as the derived data and states no route to the subject-level scans.

Access page

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

For Subject-level T1- and T2-weighted 64 mT MRI scans of the 100 participants.

No published license or data use terms

The data holder has published no license and no data use terms. Any use, sharing or commercial right has to be agreed with the data holder, and nothing can be assumed to be allowed. Default copyright and data protection law still apply.

The paper's Data Records section states that "All derived data described in this study are publicly available via Zenodo"; neither the paper nor the Zenodo record offers the individual scans or states terms for them.

Original license text Checked 2026-10-08

What you can do

  • Commercial use Not stated
  • 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
  • Sign an agreement Not stated
  • 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 Age-group templates, template segmentations and the regional volume CSV on Zenodo.

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
  • 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

Islam KT, Zakavi P, Zhong S, et al. Population-based Brain Templates for Ultra-Low-Field MRI. Scientific Data 13, 1379 (2026). doi:10.1038/s41597-026-07622-4

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.