Group-level cortical surface parcellation with sulcal pits labeling

Sulcal pits are the points of maximal depth within the folds of the cortical surface. These shape descriptors give a unique opportunity to access to a rich, fine-scale representation of the geometry and the developmental milestones of the cortical surface. However, using sulcal pits analysis at group level requires new numerical tools to establish inter-subject correspondences. Here, we address this issue by taking advantage of the geometrical information carried by sulcal basins that are the local patches of surfaces surrounding each sulcal pit. Our framework consists in two phases. First, we present a new method to generate a population-specific atlas of this sulcal basins organi- zation as a fold-level parcellation of the cortical surface. Then, we address the labeling of individual sulcal pits and corresponding basins with respect to this atlas. To assess their validity, we applied these methodological advances on two different populations of healthy subjects. The first database of 137 adults allowed us to compare our method to the state-of-the-art and the second database of 209 children, aged between 0 and 18 years, illustrates the adaptability and relevance of our method in the context of pediatric data showing strong variations in cortical volume and folding.