Diffeomorphic cortical surface mapping and its comparison with spherical cortical mapping

In this paper, we introduced a multi-manifold large deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping (MM-LDDMM) algorithm that carried the cortical hemispheric surface and its sulcal and gyral curves simultaneously from one to the other through a flow of diffeomorphisms. We compared it with two spherical cortical mapping algorithms in software packages of FreeSurfer and CARET based on local cortical features (e.g. gyral/sulcal curves and sulcal regions). Our results supported that the MM-LDDMM algorithm provided better cortical alignment in terms of these local features when compared with the spherical algorithms evaluated in this study.