David Meunier | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Longitudinal MRI template of the baboon brain from birth to adolescence

The baboon (Papio) is an invaluable resource within nonhuman primate research, having the advantage of being a cercopithecoid (Old World monkey) with one of the largest brains among non-hominid primates. In order to facilitate comparative developmental neuroscience research, we present the BABACOOL (BAby Brain Atlas COnstruction for Optimized Labeled segmentation) approach for creating multi-modal developmental atlases, which we used to produce BaBa21, a population-based longitudinal developmental baboon template. BaBa21 is a spatio-temporal template that consists of structural (T1- and T2-weighted) images and tissue probability maps from a population of 21 baboons (Papio anubis) scanned at 4 timepoints beginning from about 2 weeks after birth and continuing to sexual maturity (5 years). Further, his study offers a fully automatic method for generating a template at any intermediate age for future age-specific group studies. This resource is made available to provide a normalization target for baboon data across the lifespan, including intermediate timepoints, and moreover facilitate neuroimaging research in baboons, comparative research with humans and nonhuman primate species for which developmental templates are available (e.g., macaques).

q-bio.QM↗

arXiv2025

Fetpype: An Open-Source Pipeline for Reproducible Fetal Brain MRI Analysis

Fetal brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is crucial for assessing neurodevelopment in utero. However, fetal MRI analysis remains technically challenging due to fetal motion, low signal-to-noise ratio, and the need for complex multi-step processing pipelines. These pipelines typically include motion correction, super-resolution reconstruction, tissue segmentation, and cortical surface extraction. While specialized tools exist for each individual processing step, integrating them into a robust, reproducible, and user-friendly end-to-end workflow remains difficult. This fragmentation limits reproducibility across studies and hinders the adoption of advanced fetal neuroimaging methods in both research and clinical contexts. Fetpype addresses this gap by providing a standardized, modular, and reproducible framework for fetal brain MRI preprocessing and analysis, enabling researchers to process raw T2-weighted acquisitions through to derived volumetric and surface-based outputs within a unified workflow. Fetpype is publicly available on GitHub at https://github.com/fetpype/fetpype.

eess.IV↗