A Digital Anatomical Atlas of the Human Cerebellum at Subfolial Resolution

TL;DR

A new digital atlas of the human cerebellum provides detailed anatomical reference at a high resolution, enabling more precise analysis of cerebellar data.

Contribution

The novel contribution is a subfolial resolution digital atlas of the cerebellum and a new registration method called ARCUS.

Findings

The atlas has a mean inter-vertex spacing of 0.16 mm, allowing accurate tracing of subfolial contours.

The ARCUS method enables lobule-labeled cerebellar cortical sheet mapping from standard-resolution MRI.

The atlas is publicly released in both volumetric and surface representations.

Abstract

Interest in the cerebellum has surged with the emerging consensus that it supports diverse functions that are topographically arranged across the cerebellar cortex. Further refinement of these in vivo structure–function relationships is limited by the resolution of existing atlases. Here we present a digital atlas derived from a recent reconstruction of the human cerebellar cortical surface with a mean inter‐vertex spacing of 0.16 mm, sufficient to accurately trace the contours of the subfolia, while being consistent with the Schmahmann et al. atlas at the lobular level. We also present ARCUS, a diffeomorphic atlas‐to‐subject registration approach that yields an atlas‐derived, lobule‐labeled cerebellar cortical sheet with macroscale folding geometry in individual subjects from standard‐resolution MRI. Publicly released, this atlas offers an anatomical ground‐truth reference in both volumetric and surface representations at unprecedented granularity, enabling novel and more precise analyses and visualizations of cerebellar data.

We present a digital atlas of the human cerebellum at subfolial resolution with both volumetric and surface representations, offering an anatomical ground‐truth reference at unprecedented granularity.

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