A Digital White Matter Atlas of the Rhesus Macaque Brain

Elizabeth Zakszewski¹, Nagesh Adluru¹, Ned Kalin¹, Andrew L. Alexander¹

Since ROI-based analysis of WM pathways in the rhesus macaque is useful in studies using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data, we have here created an atlas based on a publicly available DTI-based template of young rhesus macaques. The atlas was constructed to mimic the structure of an existing human atlas that is widely used, making results translatable between species. Parcellations were carefully hand-drawn on a principle-direction color coded fractional anisotropy image of the population template. The resulting atlas can be used as reference to which to register individual rhesus data for the purpose of white-matter parcellation, or individual regions from the atlas may be warped into individual space to be used in ROI-based analyses.