Abstract

BigBrain is a 3D 20micron isotropic histological volume of the human brain, developed by the laboratories of Katrin Amunts (Juelich) and Alan C. Evans (Montreal Neurological Institute) (Amunts et al., Science 2013). It is a freely available dataset, enabling the formation of links between macroscale neuroimaging and microscale neuroscience, and is now used as the reference atlas for the EU’s Human Brain Project. In this talk I will present work on deep learning applications for automated identification and analysis of neocortical layers in the BigBrain. I will then briefly discuss other ongoing BigBrain projects including the annotation of high-resolution subcortical atlas for neuroanatomical, neurosurgical and educational purposes alongside the latest work increasing the resolution to 1micron for neuron-scale analyses. The full dataset and tools for viewing and analysing the data are being brought to Cambridge and all interested in using the dataset for research, clinical or education purposes are warmly encouraged to attend.

Konrad has recently returned from 10 months working on the BigBrain at the Montreal Neurological Institute, Canada, with Professor Alan C. Evans and was awarded a MNI -Cambridge Collaboration Grant to support collaborative links between these two institutes.