Hierarchical brain mapping via a generalized Dirichlet solution for mapping brain manifolds

Abstract
In this paper we present a coarse-to-fine approach for the transformation of digital anatomical textbooks from the ideal to the individual that unifies the work on landmark deformations and volume based transformation. The Hierarchical approach is linked to the Biological problem itself, coming out of the various kinds of information which is provided by the anatomists. This information is in the form of points, lines, surfaces and sub-volumes corresponding to 0, 1, 2, and 3 dimensional sub-manifolds respectively. The algorithm is driven by these sub- manifolds. We follow the approach that the highest dimensional transformation is a result from the solution of a sequence of lower dimensional problems driven by successive refinements or partitions of the images into various Biologically meaningful sub-structures.