Since the early 1980s, conventional structural MRI has allowed researchers to visualize the living human brain. Detailed images of the brain are possible in part because the different brain tissue types (i.e., gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid [CSF]) contain different proportions of water (Rumboldt et al. 2010). With MRI, the brain can be viewed from bottom to top (axial), from front to back (coronal), from left to right (sagittal), or at any oblique angle to these planes. This flexibility also enables greater accuracy in aligning images with internal landmarks, an essential consideration for ensuring consistency of data from replicate images from the same individual (Rohlfing 2006).
