Investigation of the spatial spectrum of cortical contours on cross-sections of the brain

The human brain possesses a highly structured surface. A quantitative examination of the cortical surface is of particular interest for many questions, e.g. the investigation the relation between the spatial frequencies of cortical surfaces and spatial frequencies within Electroencephalogram and the analysis of changes of the structure of the human brain caused by diseases. In this paper a Fourier analysis approach to investigate the spatial spectrum of contour data of the cortical surface is introduced. The method was validated using artificial data with known spatial spectrum and employed to investigate the spatial frequencies of the cortical surface of a human subject.