TemplateFlow: FAIR-sharing of multi-scale, multi-species brain models

Rastko Ciric; William H Thompson; Romy Lorenz; Mathias Goncalves; Eilidh E MacNicol; Christopher J Markiewicz; Yaroslav O Halchenko; Satrajit S Ghosh; Krzysztof J Gorgolewski; Russell A Poldrack; Oscar Esteban

doi:10.1038/s41592-022-01681-2

TemplateFlow: FAIR-sharing of multi-scale, multi-species brain models

Nat Methods. 2022 Dec;19(12):1568-1571. doi: 10.1038/s41592-022-01681-2. Epub 2022 Dec 1.

Authors

Rastko Ciric^{1

2}, William H Thompson^{3

4

5}, Romy Lorenz^{3

6

7}, Mathias Goncalves³, Eilidh E MacNicol⁸, Christopher J Markiewicz³, Yaroslav O Halchenko⁹, Satrajit S Ghosh^{10

11}, Krzysztof J Gorgolewski³, Russell A Poldrack³, Oscar Esteban^{12

13}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. rastko@stanford.edu.
² Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. rastko@stanford.edu.
³ Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁴ Department of Applied Information Technology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
⁵ Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁶ MRC CBU, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁷ Department of Neurophysics, MPI, Leipzig, Germany.
⁸ Department of Neuroimaging, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
⁹ Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA.
¹⁰ McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹¹ Department of Otolaryngology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
¹² Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. phd@oscaresteban.es.
¹³ Department of Radiology, University Hospital of Lausanne and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. phd@oscaresteban.es.

Abstract

Reference anatomies of the brain ('templates') and corresponding atlases are the foundation for reporting standardized neuroimaging results. Currently, there is no registry of templates and atlases; therefore, the redistribution of these resources occurs either bundled within existing software or in ad hoc ways such as downloads from institutional sites and general-purpose data repositories. We introduce TemplateFlow as a publicly available framework for human and non-human brain models. The framework combines an open database with software for access, management, and vetting, allowing scientists to share their resources under FAIR-findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable-principles. TemplateFlow enables multifaceted insights into brains across species, and supports multiverse analyses testing whether results generalize across standard references, scales, and in the long term, species.

TemplateFlow: FAIR-sharing of multi-scale, multi-species brain models

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