Accurate spatial correspondence between template and subject images is a crucial step in neuroimaging studies and clinical applications like stereotactic neurosurgery. In the absence of a robust quantitative approach, we sought to propose and validate a set of point landmarks, anatomical fiducials (AFIDs), that could be quickly, accurately, and reliably placed on magnetic resonance images of the human brain. Using several publicly available brain templates and individual participant datasets, novice users could be trained to place a set of 32 AFIDs with millimetric accuracy. Furthermore, the utility of the AFIDs protocol is demonstrated for evaluating subject‐to‐template and template‐to‐template registration. Specifically, we found that commonly used voxel overlap metrics were relatively insensitive to focal misregistrations compared to AFID point‐based measures. Our entire protocol and study framework leverages open resources and tools, and has been developed with full transparency in mind so that others may freely use, adopt, and modify. This protocol holds value for a broad number of applications including alignment of brain images and teaching neuroanatomy.

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Brainhack is an innovative meeting format that promotes scientific collaboration and education in an open, inclusive environment. This NeuroView describes the myriad benefits for participants and the research community and how Brainhacks complement conventional formats to augment scientific progress.

Tools available for reproducible, quantitative assessment of brain correspondence have been limited. We previously validated the anatomical fiducial (AFID) placement protocol for point-based assessment of image registration with millimetric (mm) accuracy. In this data descriptor, we release curated AFID placements for some of the most commonly used structural magnetic resonance imaging datasets and templates. The release of our accurate placements allows for rapid quality control of image registration, teaching neuroanatomy, and clinical applications such as disease diagnosis and surgical targeting. We release placements on individual subjects from four datasets (N = 132 subjects for a total of 15,232 fiducials) and 14 brain templates (4,288 fiducials), totalling more than 300 human rater hours of annotation. We also validate human rater accuracy of released placements to be within 1 – 2 mm (using more than 45,000 Euclidean distances), consistent with prior studies. Our data is compliant with the Brain Imaging Data Structure allowing for facile incorporation into neuroimaging analysis pipelines.