It is well established that the two hemispheres of the human brain exhibit a certain degree of asymmetry. Postmortem studies of developing brains of pre- and postpartum infants have shown that already in this early stage of development Heschl gyrus, planum temporale and superior temporal sulcus (STS) exhibit pronounced asymmetry. Advances in acquisition and computational evaluation of high-resolution magnetic resonance images provide enhanced tools for noninvasive studies of brain asymmetry in newborns. Until now most atlases used for image processing contain themselves asymmetry and may thus introduce and/or increase asymmetry already contained in the original data of brain structural or functional images. So, it is preferable to avoid the application of these asymmetric atlases. Thus, in this paper we present our framework to create a symmetric brain atlas from a group of newborns aged between 39 and 42 weeks after gestation. The resulting atlas demonstrates no difference between its original and its flipped version as should be the case for an asymmetric atlas. Consequently, the resulting symmetric atlas can be used for applications such as analysis of development of brain asymmetry in the context of language development. 1. Introduction Corresponding structures of the two hemispheres of a human brain show a high level of bilateral symmetry. Anyway, this symmetry is not perfect, and there exists as well functional as structural asymmetries. Anatomical differences between hemispheres have been shown by numerous structural brain studies. One of the best known of these structural asymmetries is a kind of twist between the hemispheres where the right side of the brain is slightly warped forward relative to the left known as Yakovlevian torque [1]. Furthermore, asymmetries are found at the macroscopic and cytoarchitectonic level, such as a larger left planum temporale [2] and a longer left sylvian fissure. The best known functional asymmetry is the specialization of the left hemisphere for language [3]. Most functional asymmetry examinations focus on the planum temporale because of its relationship to handedness and language laterality [4]. In humans, the planum temporale present probably the most prominent and functionally significant human brain asymmetry since the left one is up to 10 times larger than its right-hemisphere counterpart [5]. Numerous studies have been conducted to investigate structural asymmetries that might provide important clues to the neuroanatomical basis of lateralized brain functions. Studying the asymmetry of the brain of
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