PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Z. Wang
AU  - B. Martin
AU  - J. Weickenmeier
AU  - K. Garikipati
TI  - An inverse modelling study on the local volume changes during early growth of the fetal human brain
AID  - 10.1101/2020.10.08.332411
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.10.08.332411
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/10/08/2020.10.08.332411.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/10/08/2020.10.08.332411.full
AB  - We take a data-driven approach to deducing the local volume changes accompanying early development of the fetal human brain. Our approach uses fetal brain atlas MRI data for the geometric changes in representative cases. Using a nonlinear continuum mechanics model of morphoelastic growth, we invert the deformation field obtained from MRI registration to arrive at a field for the growth deformation gradient tensor. Our field inversion uses a combination of direct and adjoint methods for computing gradients of the objective function while constraining the optimization by the physics of morphoelastic growth. We thus infer a growth deformation gradient field that obeys the laws of morphoelastic growth. The errors between the MRI data and the forward displacement solution driven by the inverted growth deformation gradient field are found to be smaller than the reference displacement by well over an order of magnitude, and can be driven even lower. The results thus reproduce the three-dimensional growth during the early development of the fetal brain with controllable error.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.