A normative PD-specific brain template derived from 230 patients for optimizing analyses in deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease

Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) is an accepted therapy for Parkinson’s disease (PD). Research to improve STN-DBS requires a brain template that serves as a common space to perform group analyses. Existing templates are unsuitable for STN-DBS-eligible patients due to the population, sample size and MRI sequence they are based on. To address this, the NeuTraNE PD-230 brain template was developed, based on MRI data from 230 patients who underwent STN-DBS-surgery at the Radboudumc. The template is available in both T1-weighted and T2-weighted version with isotropic resolutions of 1.1 mm and 0.5 mm. Evaluation showed superior inter-subject similarity compared to 12 of 14 existing templates (p<0.0003). The T2-weighted 0.5 mm version also outperformed five of eight templates in atlas-based segmentation accuracy (p<0.001). These results demonstrate that the PD-DBS more accurately represents the anatomy of STN-DBS-eligible PD patients and offers improved registration performance. The brain template is provided in a NIfTI-format.