Restoration of the Sphere-Cortex Homeomorphism

Abstract

The proposed algorithm has been developed as a pre-processing tool for inflating cortical surface meshes, which have been created using segmentation and subsequent triangulation of magnetic resonance images (MRI) [1]. It works directly on the triangulated surface and is therefore completely independent from the underlying segmentation. It needs no other information than the triangle mesh itself, which makes it generally applicable for the removal of topological noise. The homeomorphism between cortical surface and sphere is re-established by removing handles and opening connections. Moreover, the presented approach guarantees a manifold mesh by locally examining connectivity in the neighbourhood of each vertex and removing non-manifold components. It will be embedded into the source reconstruction software package CURRY (Compumedics Neuroscan, El Paso, TX, USA).