Analysis of brain activation patterns using a 3-D scale-space primal sketch

• A fundamental problem in brain imaging concerns how to define functional areas consisting of neurons that are activated together as populations. We propose that this issue can be ideally addressed by a computer vision tool referred to as the scale-space primal sketch. This concept has the attractive properties that it allows for automatic and simultaneous extraction of the spatial extent and the significance of regions with locally high activity. In addition, a hierarchical nested tree structure of activated regions and subregions is obtained. The subject in this article is to show how the scale-space primal sketch can be used for automatic determination of the spatial extent and the significance of rCBF changes. Experiments show the result of applying this approach to functional PET data, including a preliminary comparison with two more traditional clustering techniques. Compared to previous approaches, the method overcomes the limitations of performing the analysis at a single scale or assuming specific models of the data.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datorseende och robotik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Vision and Robotics (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Medicinska och farmaceutiska grundvetenskaper -- Neurovetenskaper (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Basic Medicine -- Neurosciences (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Bioinformatik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Bioinformatics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

brain activation

human brain mapping

functional region

scale-space

primal sketch

scale selection

blob detection

multi-scale representation

computer vision

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)