Cortical Folding Shows Fingerprinting Ability in Early Developing Rhesus Macaques (2024)

Undergraduate: Yilan (Maya) Yin

Faculty Advisor: Gang Li
Department: Biostatistics, Joint Biomedical Engineering

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Previous human studies have revealed that complex cortical folding patterns have the fingerprinting ability for individual identification as early as 30 postmenstrual weeks and remain a stable individual identifier across ages. However, it is unknown if this fingerprinting ability can extend to nonhuman primates with simpler cortical folds, especially during early brain development marked by dramatic cortical development. For the first time, we perform individual identification tasks based on a longitudinal dataset including 156 rhesus macaque scans ranging from 0 to 3 years in age. Mean curvature, average convexity, and sulcal depth on the cortical surface are used as analysis features. Using global-based, region-of-interest-based, and vertex-wise identification frameworks, our results have shown 100% identification accuracy. Results indicate high identification accuracy in the superior and middle temporal gyri for all cortical folding features. This study reveals that cortical folding patterns are reliable individual markers of rhesus macaques with high fingerprinting ability during dynamic early postnatal brain development, despite that macaques have simpler and less individualized cortical shapes than humans.

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