AContinuousModelofCortical.PDFVIP

A Continuous Model of Cortical Connectivity Daniel Moyer, Boris A. Gutman, Joshua Faskowitz, Neda Jahanshad, and Paul M. Thompson Imaging Genetics Center, University of Southern California moyerd@usc.edu Abstract. We present a continuous model for structural brain connec- tivity based on the Poisson point process. The model treats each stream- line curve in a tractography as an observed event in connectome space, here a product space of cortical white matter boundaries. We approxi- mate the model parameter via kernel density estimation. To deal with the heavy computational burden, we develop a fast parameter estima- tion method by pre-computing associated Legendre products of the data, leveraging properties of the spherical heat kernel. We show how our ap- proach can be used to assess the quality of cortical parcellations with respect to connectivty. We further present empirical results that suggest the “discrete” connectomes derived from our model have substantially higher test-retest reliability compared to standard methods. Keywords: Human Connectome, Di?usion MRI, Non-Parametric Esti- mation 1 Introduction In recent years the study of structural and functional brain connectivity has expanded rapidly. Following the rise of di?usion and functional MRI connec- tomics has unlocked a wealth of knowledge to be explored. Almost synonymous with the connectome is the network-theory based representation of the brain. In much of the recent literature the quantitative analysis of connectomes has focused on region-to-region connectivity. This paradigm equates physical brain regions with nodes in a graph, and uses observed structural measurements or functional correlations as a proxy for edge strengths between nodes. Critical to this representation of connectivity is the delineation of brain re- gions, the parcella