An international team led by the ITACA Institute at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) has developed one of the most comprehensive and detailed structural atlases of the human brain to date. Known as HoliAtlas, it will be particularly useful for the study and early diagnosis of neurological and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.

The new map is based on ultra-high-resolution multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and far exceeds the level of detail found in existing MRI-based atlases.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports (Nature), was led by Professor José V. Manjón, coordinator of the MIALAB group at ITACA-UPV, in collaboration with international institutions such as the CNRS and the University of Bordeaux, as well as Spanish and European centres.

"HoliAtlas provides a complete, multi-level representation of the brain, from global structures down to very specific substructures, in a holistic manner. Its resolution and multimodal integration facilitate the identification of deep structures

and enable the development of more accurate automatic segmentation methods, improved morphological analysis, and the detection of very subtle anatomical changes.

"For this reason, this atlas could be of great help in studying conditions such as Alzheimer's and/or Parkinson's and facilitating a more accurate diagnosis. Having increasingly precise brain atlases is key to understanding the architecture of the human brain, integrating data from different studies and moving towards more personalised diagnoses and treatments," explains José Vicente Manjón, head of the MIA-LAB group at ITACA-UPV.

Brain atlases function as reference maps, essential for precisely locating anatomical structures and comparing data across studies or populations. Furthermore, they are key tools in both neuroscientific research and clinical applications, such as surgical planning or the analysis of neurological diseases.

"Until now, most MRI-based atlases had a resolution of approximately 1 mm³. The new atlas developed achieves a resolution of 0.125 mm³, allowing much smaller and more complex brain structures to be observed," notes Sergio Morell, a researcher with the MIA-LAB group at ITACA and co-author of the study.

Based on data from 75 healthy brains

To construct this atlas, the researchers used brain images from 75 healthy volunteers from the prestigious Human Connectome Project, one of the largest international repositories of neuroimaging data. Using this data, they applied advanced processing and normalisation techniques to generate an average brain model.

"At its most detailed level, the atlas includes up to 350 anatomical regions obtained by integrating seven different segmentation protocols, combining neuroanatomical analysis tools, artificial intelligence algorithms, and manual corrections by experts," concludes Sergio Morell.

José V. Manjón, Sergio Morell-Ortega, Marina Ruiz-Perez, Boris Mansencal, Edern Le Bot, Marien Gadea, Enrique Lanuza, Gwenaelle Catheline, Thomas Tourdias, Vincent Planche, Remi Giraud, Denis Rivière, Jean-Francois Mangin, Nicole Labra-Avila, Roberto Vivo-Hernando, Gregorio Rubio, Fernando Aparici-Robles, Maria de la Iglesia-Vaya & Pierrick Coupé. Ultra-high resolution multimodal MRI densely labelled holistic structural brain atlas. Scientific Reports. NATURE. DOI: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-40186-2