Radiology, Vol 188, 765-774, Copyright © 1993 by Radiological Society of North America
Prenatal growth of the human cerebral cortex: brainprint analysis
ML Jouandet and MD Deck
Department of Radiology, New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center, NY 10021.
To construct a series of flat maps (brainprints) that document the prenatal
growth of human cerebral cortex and help identify sulcal landmarks for
division of cortical regions of interest (ROIs) on mapped surfaces, the
authors photographed and traced histologic whole-brain slices of 25 normal
human fetal brains aged 18-42 weeks gestation. Brainprints of both cerebral
hemispheres from each fetus were constructed with semiautomatic
brain-mapping software, and each map was divided into five ROIs based on
sulcal landmarks: frontal, parietal, insular, occipital, and temporal
cortices. Surface areas of cerebral hemispheres and the five ROIs were
estimated. Corrected for histologic shrinkage, brainprint estimates of
human fetal cortical surface area were approximately twice those of
previous estimates. Cortical lobe proportions at 18 weeks appeared to be
unchanged to term. Surface area estimates correlated with fetal age, brain
weight, and brain volume. This collection of cortical maps may guide future
quantitative analyses of cerebral hemispheric growth in premature and term
infants who undergo magnetic resonance imaging, which may, in turn, help
predict neurobehavioral outcomes of early cortical damage.
