Analyzing The Brain’s Shape

Featuring F. Kruggel, M.D.
Professor, Biomedical Engineering
UC Irvine

Location:  McDonnell Douglas Auditorium
Free and open to the public

Abstract:
Complex shapes such as the surface of the human brain may be analyzed in a compact parametric representation obtained by a spherical harmonics transformation. Several attractive properties characterize this approach: (1) The complex and highly individual surface of a hemisphere can be quantified. (2) The description is compact: 1296 coefficients are sufficient to represent a surface at a spatial error of less than 1 mm. (3) The spherical harmonics form a set of orthonormal functions and thus span a shape space with a metric for comparing and classifying shapes (4) It is easy to reconstruct a surface from its coefficients. When the same underlying parametrization is used, it is possible to derive point-to-point correspondencies across different brain surfaces.  (5) Coefficients provide a suitable representation for searching in (brain) shape databases. 

More than 1,000 datasets were successfully processed by this mature and robust approach. Effects of gender, age and hemispheric side on brain shape were studied by in a population sample of 502 adults.

Please visit the EECS Colloquium website for a complete list of lectures.