Constructing 4-dimensional Infant Cortical Surface Atlases

 描述(申请人提供)：对出生后早期动态和关键皮质发育的神经成像研究将极大地增加我们对正常早期大脑发育的有限知识，并为神经发育起源和神经精神障碍的异常轨迹提供重要的见解。在神经成像研究中，基于皮质表面的脑图谱在不同研究中对高度折叠的皮质进行标准化、分析、可视化和比较方面发挥着基础性和日益重要的作用。由于皮质大小、形状和折叠程度的显著差异，现有的成人和新生儿皮质表面图谱在用于研究婴儿动态发育的皮质时存在问题。同时，这些基于沟回地标的皮质表面地图集在用于定位功能区时也是有问题的，因为沟回模式与大脑皮质表面地图集的匹配较差 微结构边界。为了解决所有这些限制，我们的目标是在1、3、6、9、12、18和24个月龄构建纵向一致的、特定于年龄的人群代表形状的多尺度皮质折叠(目标1)。为了确保4D地图集的纵向一致性，我们将利用受试者内部的纵向约束来建立主题间一致的皮质对应。为了捕捉皮质折叠的多尺度特性，我们将使用曲率信息的球面小波分解来表征皮质折叠。为了保证地图集中皮质折叠的清晰度和代表性，我们将开发一种稀疏表示方法来自适应地整合个体的皮质折叠。下一步，我们的目标是基于皮质厚度、表面积和皮质局部回旋(AI2)的动态发展轨迹，将4D婴儿皮质表面图谱划分为不同的区域。大脑皮质的动态发育轨迹表明了大脑微结构的潜在变化，微结构本质上决定了大脑皮质的分子组织和功能原理，因此可以比传统的脑沟标志物更好地定义发育、微结构和功能上不同的区域。最后，我们将包装我们的4D婴儿皮质表面图谱，并将其免费发布给社区。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Neuroimaging studies of the dynamic and critical cortex development during early postnatal stages would greatly increase our very limited knowledge on normal early brain development, and also provide important insights into neurodevelopmental origins and abnormal trajectories of neuropsychiatric disorders. In neuroimaging studies, cortical surface-based brain atlases play fundamental and increasingly important roles for normalization, analysis, visualization, and comparison of the highly-folded cortex across different studies. Existing cortical surface atlases developed for adults and neonates are problematic when used for studying the dynamic developing cortex in infants, due to dramatic differences of cortical size, shape, and folding degree. Meanwhile, parcellations in these cortical surfaces atlases based on the sulcal-gyral landmarks are also problematic when used for localization of functional regions, due to poor matching of sulcal-gyral patterns with the microstructural borders. To address all these limitations, we aim to construct longitudinally-consistent, age-specific population representative shapes of multi-scale cortical folding at 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 18 and 24 months of age (Aim 1). To ensure the longitudinal consistency of 4D atlases, we will capitalize on within- subject longitudinal constraints to establish consistent inter-subjec cortical correspondences. To capture the multi-scale nature of cortical folding, we will characterize cortical folding by using spherical wavelet decomposition of curvature information. To ensure the clarity and representativeness of cortical folding in atlases, we will develop a sparse representation method to adaptively integrate individuals' cortical folding. Next, we aim to parcellate 4D infant cortical surface atlases into distinct regions based on the dynamic developmental trajectories of cortical thickness, surface area, and cortical local gyrification (Ai 2). The dynamic cortical developmental trajectories indicate the underlying changes of microstructures, which essentially determine the molecular organization and functional principles of the cortex, and thus can better define the developmentally, microstructurally, and functionally distinct regions than the conventional sulcalgyral landmarks. Finally, we will package our 4D infant cortical surface atlases and release them freely to the community.