• Question: How Do You Inflate The Brains?

    Asked by shayejgg to Daniel on 19 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Daniel Mietchen

      Daniel Mietchen answered on 19 Jun 2010:

      Technically, we only inflate surfaces within digital representations of brains, and “inflating brains” is just a shorthand.

      This involves several steps:
      (1) creating a brain surface on the basis of a brain scan
      (2) casting a grid of points over this surface
      (3) analysing the relationships between these points mathematically
      (4) repeatedly modifying the point grid such that the surface represented by the points resembles a sphere ever more closely.

      The general process of grid inflation (widely used in computer graphics) is shown in this video, and an example with brains is in this one at around 11:53min (which also shows real brains around 9:30min and brain scans at around 11:30min and is generally a good introduction to my research field).

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