Automated Gyral Identification Using Interpolated Sulcal Curves

Atrophy of the human brain is observed as the progress of dementia. The atrophy occurs at the different rate on each gyrus. Estimating the atrophy for each gyrus helps us for the purpose of distinguishing diagnosis. To estimate the atrophy for each gyrus, gyri on the cortical surface should be identified. This paper aims to propose a fully automated method for identifying the gyri in three-dimensional (3-D) human brain magnetic resonance (MR) images. To clarify the effectiveness of the proposed method, it was applied to identify the superior frontal gyrus, the middle frontal gyrus, the precentral gyrus and the central gyrus. Experimental results showed that the proposed method correctly segmented the appropriate gyri.