Spatial accuracy of Allen Human Brain Atlas tissue samples and its effects on neuroimaging studies

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre 

The Allen Human Brain Atlas (AHBA) consists of gene expression profiled within 3702 tissue samples from six donor brains. The provision of sample coordinates within MNI-space has made comparing neuroimaging findings to normative gene expression feasible and popular; the AHBA has been featured in at least 202 studies over the last five years (via PubMed) and ~44 OHBM 2024 abstracts. In fact, there exist multiple sets of coordinates describing these sample locations: 1) "original" coordinates from the AHBA (Hawrylycz, 2012), 2) updated coordinates from the "alleninf" package (Gorgolewski, 2014) and used in the abagen software (Markello, 2021), and 3) "CIC" coordinates derived at the Cerebral Imaging Centre via multispectral image registrations to a newer MNI template (Devenyi, 2018). Surprisingly, these coordinates place many tissue samples in dramatically different anatomical locations (Figure 1a,b). Here, we test the accuracy of these three coordinate sets through multiple types of tests of location accuracy, and then show that inaccuracies in coordinates can result in improper inferences in neuroimaging studies.