Rapid Reconstruction of Infant Cortical Surfaces with Spherical Topology

Motivation: Cortical surface reconstruction (CSR) is important for surface-based analysis of the structure and function of the cerebral cortex. Goal(s): We present an efficient method for simultaneous CSR and spherical mapping, all within a matter of seconds. Inherent correspondence allows easy and direct mapping of geometric features from cortical surfaces to the sphere. Approach: Our flow-based method learns velocity fields to deform a spherical template mesh to the cortical surfaces with one-to-one vertex correspondence for direct spherical mapping. Results: Using data from the Baby Connectome Project (BCP), we demonstrate that our method predicts more accurate and uniform surface meshes compared with several state-of-the-art methods. Impact: Our method provides a way for fast and accurate infant cortical surface reconstruction. The one-to-one vertex correspondence between template sphere and the cortical surfaces enables easy and direct downstream analyses.