Τhe accuracy of template‐based neuroimaging investigations depends on the template's image quality and representativeness of the individuals under study. Yet a thorough, quantitative investigation of how available standardized and study‐specific T1‐weighted templates perform in studies on older adults has not been conducted. The purpose of this work was to construct a high‐quality standardized T1‐weighted template specifically designed for the older adult brain, and systematically compare the new template to several other standardized and study‐specific templates in terms of image quality, performance in spatial normalization of older adult data and detection of small inter‐group morphometric differences, and representativeness of the older adult brain. The new template was constructed with state‐of‐the‐art spatial normalization of high‐quality data from 222 older adults. It was shown that the new template (a) exhibited high image sharpness, (b) provided higher inter‐subject spatial normalization accuracy and (c) allowed detection of smaller inter‐group morphometric differences compared to other standardized templates, (d) had similar performance to that of study‐specific templates constructed with the same methodology, and (e) was highly representative of the older adult brain.

中文翻译：

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用于老年人研究的高性能 T1 加权大脑模板的开发和评估

基于模板的神经影像研究的准确性取决于模板的图像质量和所研究个体的代表性。然而，尚未对可用的标准化和特定于研究的 T1 加权模板在老年人研究中的表现进行彻底、定量的调查。这项工作的目的是构建一个专门为老年人大脑设计的高质量标准化 T1 加权模板，并在图像质量、空间归一化性能方面系统地将新模板与其他几个标准化和特定于研究的模板进行比较。老年人数据和小组间形态测量差异的检测，以及老年人大脑的代表性。新模板是用 222 名老年人的高质量数据的最先进空间归一化构建的。结果表明，与其他标准化模板相比，新模板 (a) 表现出高图像清晰度，(b) 提供了更高的受试者间空间归一化精度，(c) 允许检测到更小的组间形态测量差异，(d) 具有相似的与使用相同方法构建的研究特定模板的性能相比，（e）高度代表老年人的大脑。