A probabilistic atlas of the human brain in alzheimer's disease: Emerging patterns of variability, asymmetry and degeneration

We report a new brain aliasing strategy, applied to create the first disease-specific brain atlas. The atlas, constructed to represent the human brain in Alzheimer's Disease (AD), provides a 3-dimensional analysis of structural variation throughout the brain, based on 84 structures per subject. Specialized strategies were developed for accurate group averaging of anatomy, to average cortical topography and to encode its local variation. Disease-specific features and asymmetries emerged cortically and subcortically that were not apparent in the individual anatomies. A sharply-defined mosaic of variability and asymmetry patterns emerged at the cortex, which segregated sharply according to the functional specialization of each system.