title: Numeric and symbolic knowledge representation of cerebral cortex anatomy: methods and preliminary results.
abstract: The human cerebral cortex anatomy describes the brain organization at the scale of gyri and sulci. It is used as landmarks for neurosurgery as well as localization support for functional data analysis or inter-subject data comparison. Existing models of the cortex anatomy either rely on image labeling but fail to represent variability and structural properties or rely on a conceptual model but miss the inner 3D nature and relations of anatomical structures. This study was therefore conducted to propose a model of sulco-gyral anatomy for the healthy human brain. We hypothesized that both numeric knowledge (i.e., image-based) and symbolic knowledge (i.e., concept-based) have to be represented and coordinated. In addition, the representation of this knowledge should be application-independent in order to be usable in various contexts. Therefore, we devised a symbolic model describing specialization, composition and spatial organization of cortical anatomical structures. We also collected numeric knowledge such as 3D models of shape and shape variation about cortical anatomical structures. For each numeric piece of knowledge, a companion file describes the concept it refers to and the nature of the relationship. Demonstration software performs a mapping between the numeric and the symbolic aspects for browsing the knowledge base.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire IDM-UPRES-EA 3192, Faculté de Médecine de Rennes, Avenue du Professeur Léon Bernard, 35043 Rennes cedex, France.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Dameron
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gibaud
authors.forename: X
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Morandi
mesh_terms: D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D019992:Databases as Topic; D006801:Humans; D019146:Hypermedia; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D007802:Language; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008488:Medical Illustration; D009445:Neuroanatomy; D011381:Programming Languages; D009626:Terminology as Topic