Age-specific MRI brain and head templates for healthy adults from 20 through 89 years of age

Paul T. Fillmore, Michelle C. Phillips-Meek, John E. Richards

This study created and tested a database of adult, age-specific MRI brain and head templates. The participants included healthy adults from 20 through 89 years of age. The templates were done in five-year, 10-year, and multi-year intervals from 20 through 89 years, and consist of average T1W for the head and brain, and segmenting priors for gray matter (GM), white matter (WM), and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). It was found that age-appropriate templates provided less biased tissue classification estimates than age-inappropriate reference data and reference data based on young adult templates. This database is available for use by other investigators and clinicians for their MRI studies, as well as other types of neuroimaging and electrophysiological research.