d3view Users tutorial (3): Understanding the imaging problem - anatomy

Let us imagine that an anatomical dataset has been confined to a region of space. Next let us choose a point inside that spatial region, eg. P=(0,0,0). P defines a common point of intersection between three axis-parallel planes:

Three intersecting planes

The 3 intersecting planes define 8 octants of the data volume. The octants are enumerated according to the right hand rule (cf. the above figure).

The brain (or perhaps skin) surface of the anatomical dataset is divided into 8 parts passing through the 8 octants:

Brain surface passing through the 8 octants

The visibility of the 8 parts of the brain can be controlled independently, revealing the anatomical dataset on the crossing planes:

Brain surface passing through the 8 octants. Octant 2 opened.

The brain surface and the three intersecting planes together form a 3d anatomical oject, to which data from functional activation datasets can be added.

Next tutorial item: Understanding the imaging problem - activation.