IIT Madras unveils world’s most detailed 3D images of human foetal brain

Bengaluru: In a groundbreaking achievement, IIT Madras (IITM) has released the most detailed high-resolution 3D images of the human foetal brain. The announcement was made on Sunday at the Science Gallery Bengaluru.

For the first time globally, researchers at the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre, IITM, have digitally imaged 5,132 brain sections using state-of-the-art technology.

The dataset, named Dharani, is open source and freely accessible to researchers worldwide. The team plans to expand the collection with 200 additional brain samples, including healthy adult brains, diseased brains, aged brains, and even a brain affected by rabies.

The images offer cellular-level resolution, where each pixel corresponds to a neuron, making them gigapixel images. Alongside imaging, the researchers mapped over 500 regions of the brain to create an atlas of human brain sections.

"The project was done at less than one-tenth of the cost in Western countries. The research was undertaken by a multidisciplinary team at IITM with researchers from India, Australia, the USA, Romania, and South Africa," IITM said in a statement. 

The initiative received support from the Office of the Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, Premji Invest, and Fortis Healthcare, among others.

The findings have been published as a special issue by the Journal of Comparative Neurology, a 130-year-old peer-reviewed journal in neuroscience.

Prof Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam, Head of the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre, emphasised the impact of this work on medical imaging. “Our data can advance brain imaging for live patients and has potential applications in neuro-pharmaceuticals and quantifying neurodevelopmental disorders,” he said.

The event was attended by Kris Gopalakrishnan and Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Comparative Neurology.