VOXEL PROCESSING TECHNIQUES FOR THE ANTEMORTEM STUDY OF NEUROANATOMY AND NEUROPATHOLOGY USING MAGNETIC-RESONANCE-IMAGING

BRAINBLAST, a program that uses voxel processing, was developed in ord er to produce high-fidelity three-dimensional reconstructions of the b rain. Four steps were used to produce images: washing away cerebrospin al fluid (via histogramming), dissecting away the blood vessels (via a connectivity heuristic), highlighting the sulci and gyri (via a light ing model), and resampling the interior contents of the brain. After r econstruction, the images can be resampled, rotated, written on, measu red, or redissected. The technique has a variety of applications: stud y of individual variation in sulcal and gyral patterns, evaluation of structure/function relationships, measurement of volumes or subregions using anatomically defined landmarks, and teaching of neuroanatomy.