Automatic labelling of the human cortical surface using sulcal basins

Human brain mapping aims at establishing correspondences between brain func tion and brain anatomy. One of the most intriguing problems in this field i s the high interpersonal variability of human neuroanatomy which makes stud ies across many subjects very difficult. The cortical folds ('sulci') often serve as landmarks that help to establish correspondences between subjects . in this paper, we will present a method that automatically detects and at tributes neuroanatomical names to the cortical folds using image analysis m ethods applied to magnetic resonance data of human brains. We claim that th e cortical folds can be subdivided into a number of substructures which we call sulcal basins. The concept of sulcal basins allows us to establish a c omplete parcellation of the cortical surface into separate regions. These r egions are neuroanatomically meaningful and can be identified from MR data sets across many subjects. Sulcal basins are segmented using a region growi ng approach. The automatic labelling is achieved by a model matching techni que. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.