Draft:MNI Coordinate System

The MNI coordinate system, also referred to as MNI space, are multiple stereotaxic brain coordinate systems created by the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital. Similar to the Talairach coordinates, MNI coordinates can be used to describe the location of particular brain structures, without having to take into account any individual brain differences. However, as the Talairach system is "unrepresentative of the population at large", MNI coordinates were developed from MRI data garnered from many individuals, in an effort to create a neural coordinate system that could be more generalizable. MNI coordinates have been matched to Tailarach coordinates to allow landmarks to correspond.

The original MNI space was MNI 305, which was created from 305 Tailarach aligned images, from which a mean brain image was taken. MNI 152 (also known as ICBM 152) was created later with higher resolution MRI images that were registered to MNI 305, and from which a mean was taken. MNI 152 is itself further made up of different atlases, with different constraints, such as linearly/non-linearly aligned and symmetric or non-symmetric brain hemispheres.