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Integration of Jülich Brain Atlas to 3D Slicer EpiSTIM project

Key Investigators

Sara Fernandez Vidal (Paris Brain Institute, France)
Valerio Frazzini (Paris Brain Institute - APHP, France)

Project Description

We intend to integrate the Julich Brain Atlas into our 3D Slicer Extension dedicaated to SEEG proceuder, called EpiSTIM.

SEEG, or Stereo-Electroencephalography, is a medical procedure used to study epilepsy. It involves placing electrodes inside the brain to record its electrical activity. Neurologists use SEEG to find the exact areas of the brain causing seizures. It helps to decide the best treatment, like resection surgery or other therapies.

EpiSTIM is a software project developed to assist neurosurgeons, neurologists and researchers in image processing tasks related to SEEG surgical procedures, from surgical stereotaxic planning to postoperative studies.

The Julich-Brain Atlas (Amunts et al. Science 2020) contains cytoarchitectonic maps of more than 200 areas of the human brain including cortical areas and subcortical nuclei. This atlas is widely used in the epileptology community both in SEEG planning and postoperatively to localize intracranial activity recorded during clinical cognitive tasks or other types of tasks.

The Julich-Brain is the foundation of the Multilevel Human Brain Atlas, which integrates neuroanatomical features with complementary maps of the molecular architecture, function and connectivity across multiple scales and is openly available to the research community via the Human Brain Project’s research infrastructure EBRAINS.

Objective

Objective A. Describe what you plan to achieve in 1-2 sentences.

Approach and Plan

Download the two versions of Julich Brain Atlas (on fsaverage and MNI templates) and visualize in 3D Slicer atlas.
Add Julich atlas terminology to the slicer
Add Julich data and terminology in EpiSTIM resources.
Map the Julich on Subject natif space for the planning module of the SEEG procedure
Add the Julich maps on the MNI visualisation of the postoperative reconstruction of the SEEG procedure

Progress and Next Steps

I spent the most time exploring the latest Julich dataset published on EBRAIN and adapting the formats of certain annotations, colormaps and ontologies (thanks to Murat Maga) to 3D Slicer. In the first figure you can see one of the labelsmap in the MNI template. And in the second one the Julich anotations in the Freesurfer Fsaverage template in the pial and inflate surfaces.