Nell’s Brain

Fine cortical and deep-brain labels come from atlas-backed segmentation. Bone, eyes, optic nerves, blood vessels, the spinal cord and the lining of the nose and sinuses are segmented from the scan by SimNIBS CHARM, and the neck vertebrae by TotalSegmentator. Muscle and fat are confirmed against a fat–water (Dixon) MRI from the same session, which also tells the salivary glands from both. The named muscles, the glands, the mandible and the three bone groups are then divided by location, so their borders are approximate. The trigeminal, facial and vestibulocochlear nerves are too fine for this scan to resolve. They are modelled, drawn where a population atlas places them on this head (the 80-bundle atlas of Garyfallidis et al., CC BY 4.0, from Yeh et al., 2018). Skin remains a derived tissue label. Skin colour, freckles, surface veins, studio lighting and subtle upper-ear contouring are cosmetic presentation layers. The photo texture is an artistically generated adaptation of my portrait, fitted to the scan’s closed eyes and neutral expression, and upscaled to 8K from a detail-enhanced version of that image. In the photo view, small eyelid gaps and nostril surface artefacts are corrected, and a cosmetic flesh-coloured cap closes the scan’s lower boundary. Dense bone and the fluid-filled eyes, both nearly black on this kind of MRI, are brightened so they show as solid on a cut and in the slices; otherwise the MRI data, slices and exposed anatomy are unchanged. Every visitor’s browser receives the same static atlas, and the viewer uploads nothing.