Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) on Tuesday released the most detailed 3D high-resolution images of the foetal brain.
The work, termed Dharani, was done under the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre of IIT-M, is available at open source platform https://brainportal.humanbrain.in/publicview/index.html.
As part of the project, 5,132 brain sections have been captured digitally using brain mapping technology developed by the centre. The work will advance the field of neuroscience and potentially lead to the development of treatment for health conditions affecting the brain.
Dr Suzana Herculano-Houzel, editor-in-chief, Journal of Comparative Neurology, said that Dharani was now the largest publicly accessible digital dataset of the human fetal brain. It was created with less than one-tenth of the initial funds that powered the Allen Brain Atlas and a technology platform that was entirely custom-made in India during the COVID pandemic. This work is the first time such advanced human neuroscience data has been produced from India.
The research was undertaken by a team at IIT-M with researchers from India, Australia, the US, Romania and South Africa, and medical collaborations with Chennai-based Mediscan Systems and Saveetha Medical College Hospital.