5th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Sydney, Australia
July 7-11, 2003


Invited Speaker in the Mini-Symposium on Mathematics in Medicine

Mapping the Human Brain with Quasi-Conformal Maps

Monica K. Hurdal
Department of Mathematics
Florida State University

The majority of the functional processing of the human brain occurs on the surface of the brain, on the cortical sheet of grey matter. To better understand how the human brain works and how various diseases can be treated, there is great interest in comparing the anatomy and function across diseased and non-diseased subjects. Due to the highly convoluted folds and fissures of the cortical surface, as well as the individual variability that occurs in the shape and size of the folds, new modelling and visualization techniques are required which can account for this variability and complex shape structure of the brain. The cortical surface is topologically equivalent to a sphere and can be reconstructed from high resolution MRI scans. However, many reconstruction algorithms create topological defects that need to be corrected. In this presentation, I will discuss my research which enables these topological defects to be automatically identified and corrected. I will then present results using a discrete quasi-conformal method that allows cortical surfaces to be mapped to the Euclidean or hyperbolic planes or a sphere and how these maps are being used to relate brain function to anatomy.



Copyright 2003 by Monica K. Hurdal. All rights reserved.