Automated manifold surgery: Constructing geometrically accurate and topologically correct models of the human cerebral cortex

Highly accurate surface models of the cerebral cortex are becoming increasi ngly important as tools in the investigation of the functional organization of the human brain. The construction of such models is difficult using cur rent neuroimaging technology due to the high degree of cortical folding. Ev en single voxel misclassifications can result in erroneous connections bein g created between adjacent hanks of a sulcus, resulting in a topologically inaccurate model. These topological defects cause the cortical model to no longer be homeomorphic to a sheet, preventing the accurate inflation, flatt ening, or spherical morphing of the reconstructed cortex. Surface deformati on techniques can guarantee the topological correctness of a model, but are time-consuming and may result in geometrically inaccurate models. in order to address this need we have developed a technique for taking a model of t he cortex, detecting and fixing the topological defects while leaving that majority of the model intact, resulting in a surface that is both geometric ally accurate and topologically correct.