A myelo-architectonic method for the structural classification of cortical areas

J. Annese^1,2, A. Pitiot ^1,3, I. D. Dinov^1,4 and A. W. Toga¹

¹Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, Department of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1769, USA
²Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
³EPIDAURE Laboratory, INRIA, Sophia Antipolis, Cedex 06902, France
⁴Department of Statistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
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Abstract

We describe an automatic and reproducible method to analyze the histological design of the cerebral cortex as applied to brain sections stained to reveal myelinated fibers. The technique provides an evaluation of the distribution of myelination across the width of the cortical mantle in accordance with a model of its curvature and its intrinsic geometry. The profile lines along which the density of staining is measured are generated from the solution of a partial differential equation (PDE) that models the intermediate layers of the cortex. Cortical profiles are classified according to significant components that emerge from wavelet analysis. Intensity profiles belonging to each distinct class are normalized and averaged to produce area-specific templates of cortical myelo-architecture.

Author Keywords: Myelo-architecture; Cerebral cortex; Cortical areas