Brain Atlas for Psychiatric Disorders and Smart Brain Imaging Assessment Platform

精神疾病大腦圖譜與智慧腦影像評估平台

Albert C. Yang, MD, PhD

楊智傑醫師

Institute of Brain Science/Digital Medicine Center, National Yang-Ming University

國立陽明大學腦科學研究所/數位醫學中心

Brain atlas is an important reference tool for studying brain function. At present, brain atlases define brain regions based on histology of neurons or anatomical structures, but there has not been any research on brain atlases specifically related to mental disorders. In recent years, psychiatric diseases have made great progress in both drug treatment and etiological research. However, the diagnosis of mental illness still relies on descriptive criteria and lacks objective diagnostic markers. Among many brain-related biomarkers, neuroimaging is the most important tool for studying brain. The recent rise of medical big data and computer sciences has led to the rapid development of artificial intelligence in medical applications. Artificial intelligence algorithms may be able to help find inconspicuous changes in brain images, combined with statistical information as important information to establish the brain mapping of psychiatric disorders. Therefore, our team aims to use the big data of magnetic resonance imaging to establishing brain mapping of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and unipolar depression. We have documented brain mapping of psychiatric disorders at different levels through structural, functional, diffusion tensor imaging, and genome-wide big data. This atlas will be able to provide relevant brain structures or dysfunctional brain regions for objectively differentiating mental illnesses. We have also integrated the research results of the brain mapping of mental illness and build a web-based platform for the visualization purpose. We anticipate that the platform may provide advanced information regarding the brain pathology of psychiatric diseases, characterizing by individualized diagnosis and clinical explainability.