Development and systematic evaluation of high resolution PD‐weighted, T2‐weighted, and T2 map templates of the MIITRA atlas for use in studies on older adults

Atlas based MRI investigations involving PD‐weighted (PDw), T2‐weighted (T2w) MRI sequences on older adults typically utilized younger adult templates such as those of the ICBM. Additionally, a thorough quantitative assessment of how available standardized PDw and T2w templates perform on aging population has not yet been performed. Here a new standardized high resolution PDw, T2w and T2 map templates of the MIITRA atlas dedicated for studies on older adults was developed using concepts of super‐resolution and sparse‐representation and compared to other available standardized templates in terms of image quality, inter‐subject spatial normalization accuracy and representativeness of the older adult brain.