The BigBrain is the brain of a 65 years old man with no neurological or psychiatric diseases in clinical records at time of death. The brain was embedded in parafin and sectioned in 7404 coronal histological sections (20 microns), stained for cell bodies. The BigBrain is the digitized reconstruction of the hi-res histological sections (20 microns isotropic).
This dataset contains the 3D blocks and 3D volumes of the BigBrain release 2015 published in the BigBrain Project website.
The 40 microns blocks divide the full BigBrain volume in 5x5x5 sub-volumes, with small overlap. The legend volume indicates in whic block a voxel at (x, y, z) lies in.
The 3D histological volumes (Merker stain) are also available at different isotropic resolutions (100, 200, 300, 400 microns) in MNI space and histological space, with and without optical balancing. The MNI ICBM152 2009b symmetric model used for the stereotaxic registration of the BigBrain can be found at http://www.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/ServicesAtlases/ICBM152NLin2009.
All files are available in MINC and NIfTI formats.
The BigBrain dataset is the result of a collaborative effort between the teams of Dr. Katrin Amunts and Dr. Karl Zilles (Forschungszentrum Jülich) and Dr. Alan Evans (Montreal Neurological Institute).
Amunts, K. et al.: "BigBrain: An Ultrahigh-Resolution 3D Human Brain Model", Science (2013) 340 no. 6139 1472-1475, June 2013 https://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6139/1472.abstract
For more information please visit the BigBrain Project website.