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Medical imaging has shown that, during early development, the brain undergoes more changes in size, shape and appearance than at any other time in life. A better understanding of brain development requires a spatio-temporal atlas that characterizes the dynamic changes during this period. In this paper we present an approach for constructing a 4D atlas of the developing brain, between 28 and 44weeks post-menstrual age at time of scan, using T1 and T2 weighted MR images from 204 premature neonates. The method used for the creation of the average 4D atlas utilizes non-rigid registration between all pairs of images to eliminate bias in the atlas toward any of the original images. In addition, kernel regression is used to produce age-dependent anatomical templates. A novelty in our approach is the use of a time-varying kernel width, to overcome the variations in the distribution of subjects at different ages …