The shape of human brain is complex and highly variable, with interactions between brain size, cortical folding, and age well-documented in the literature. However, few studies have explored how global brain size influences geometric features of the cortical surface derived from anatomical MRI. In this work, we focus on sulcal depth, an imaging phenotype that has gained significant attention in both basic research and clinical applications. We make key contributions to the field by: 1) providing the first quantitative analysis of how brain size affects sulcal depth measurements; 2) introducing a novel, scale-invariant method for sulcal depth estimation based on an original formalization of the problem; 3) presenting a validation framework and sharing our code and benchmark data with the community; and 4) demonstrating the biological relevance of our new sulcal depth measure using a large sample of 1,987 subjects spanning the developmental period from 26 weeks post-conception to adulthood.

本研究解决了全球脑尺寸对脑沟深度测量几何特征影响的研究空白，首次定量分析了脑尺寸与脑沟深度之间的关系。我们提出了一种新颖的尺度不变脑沟深度估计方法，并通过验证框架验证了该方法的有效性，展示了新测量在发育期的生物学相关性。

$DPF^*$：改进的深度势能函数用于尺度不变的脑沟深度估计