Mapping Cortical Shape Differences Using a Searchlight Approach Based On Classification of Sulcal Pit Graphs

Sylvain Takerkart (1, 2) , Guillaume Auzias (1, 3) , Lucile Brun (1, 3) , Olivier Coulon (1, 3)

1 INT - Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone
2 QARMA - éQuipe AppRentissage et MultimediA [Marseille]
3 LSIS - Laboratoire des Sciences de l'Information et des Systèmes

Studying cortical anatomy by examining the deepest part of cortical sulci, the sulcal pits, has recently raised a growing interest. In particular, constructing structural representations from patterns of pits has proved a promising approach. This study follows up in this direction and brings two main contri-butions. First, we introduce a graph kernel adapted to sulcal pit graphs, in order to perform classification of patterns of sul-cal pits using support vector machines directly in graph space. Second, we design a multivariate searchlight technique that enables the localization of informative patterns of sulcal pits. We demonstrate the relevance of our approach by studying cortical differences between male and female subjects using a large dataset of 134 subjects.

Mots clés: graph; kernel; classification; searchlight; cortex; mapping; anatomy; sulcus; sulcal pit; MRI; brain

Domaines: Neurosciences [q-bio.NC]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]; Imagerie médicale; Apprentissage [cs.LG]

Sylvain Takerkart, Guillaume Auzias, Lucile Brun, Olivier Coulon. Mapping Cortical Shape Differences Using a Searchlight Approach Based On Classification of Sulcal Pit Graphs. International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro, Apr 2015, Brooklyn, United States. ⟨hal-01112776⟩