A neonatal bimodal MR-CT head template

In this paper, we present an approach to create a fully registered bimodal MR-CT head template for neonates with a gestational age of 39 to 42 weeks. Such a template is essential for structural and functional brain studies, which require precise geometry of the head including cranial bones and fontanels-sutures. Due to the special characteristics of the problem (which requires inter-subject inter-modality registration), a two-step intensity-based registration method is proposed to globally and locally align CT images with an available MR template. By applying groupwise registration, the new neonatal CT template is then created in full alignment with the MR template to build a bimodal MR-CT template. The uploaded data include the neonatal bi-modal MR-CT template (GRAMFC_T39-42.nii and GRAMFC_CT39-42.nii) and 10 CT images (Test1.nii ~ Test10.nii) used for evaluation corresponding to the results reported in Table 2 of the article.