Gunther Helms1, Peter Dechent1, Melanie Wilke1
1Dept. Cognitive Neurology, MR-Research in Neurology and Psychiatry, University Medical Center, Gttingen, Germany
In order to identify thalamic nuclei not visible by MRI due small size and/or poor contrast, the population-based Morel atlas was registered to the 0.5mm MNI brain template, converting vtk meshes to nifti. Affine transformations were determined for each hemisphere by iterative manual assignment of anatomical landmarks. The MNI template is angulated by ~7 degrees against the intercommissural line. Small residual deviations were found around the anterior and posterior pole. The atlas is used to assign nuclear territories to thalamic stroke lesions after non-linear registration of structural MRI to MNI space.