A curvature-based approach to estimate local gyrification on the cortical surface

By Eileen Luders, Paul M. Thompson, Katherine L. Narr, Arthur W. Toga, Lutz Jäncke, Christian Gaser. NeuroImage, 2006

374 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using magnetic resonance imaging and a new method to analyze local surface shape, we examined the effects of gender on gyrification in a large and well-matched sample of healthy subjects. Unlike traditional 2D methods that produce whole-brain measurements of cortical complexity or more sophisticated 3D parametric mesh-based techniques that allow only different sections (lobes) of the cortex to be investigated, we employed a novel approach with increased spatial resolution. Although our method is sensitive to similar cortical features like the classic whole-brain gyrification index (depths of sulci and heights of gyri), we are now able to provide detailed and regionally specific estimates of cortical convolution at thousands of points across the cortical surface without introducing any bias through the rater or the selected orientation of the slices. We revealed pronounced gender differences, showing increased gyrification in frontal and parietal regions in females compared to males that agree with recent regions-of-interest findings. In addition, we detected higher female gyrification in temporal and occipital cortices that was not previously identified in studies using more global measures. No cortical area was significantly more convoluted in males compared to females. Our results demonstrate the sensitivity of this automated approach for identifying very local changes in gyrification. This technique may serve to isolate regionally specific changes in fissuration/gyrification in neurodevelopmental or neuropsychiatric disorders.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/769476b927708d099ad0f24d4e8c51774ba5a632

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Citations in the corpus

Cortical thickness and central surface estimation (2013, background): “…122 not restricted to the grid and allows metrics, such as the gyrification 123 index (Schaer et al., 2008) or other convolution measurements 124 (Luders et al., 2006; Mietchen and Gaser, 2009; Rodriguez-Carranza 125 et al., 2008; Toro et al., 2008), that can only be measured using sur- 126 face…”
A Surface-Based Approach to Quantify Local Cortical Gyrification (2008, background): “Smoothed absolute mean curvature [70] is characteristically”
Chronic pain may change the structure of the brain. (2008, background): “More recently, this has also allowed the local three-dimensional computation of the gyrification index as a measure of the degree of folding of a given cortical area [47].”
CAT: a computational anatomy toolbox for the analysis of structural MRI data (2024, methodology): “To obtain measurements of “cortical folding,” the user has a variety of options in CAT, ranging from Gyrification [ 35 ] to Sul-cal Depth [ 36 ] to Cortical Complexity [ 37 ] to the Surface Ratio [ 38 ], as explained and illustrated in Fig.”
Heterochronous laminar maturation in the human prefrontal cortex (2025, unknown): “The third sensitivity analysis included regional mean curvature as a covariate, which indexes the magnitude of folding present on the cortical surface and thus summarizes gyral and sulcal patterns 116 .”