Protocol for quantitative characterization of human retinotopic maps using quasiconformal mapping.

Abstract

High-field functional magnetic resonance imaging generates in vivo retinotopic maps, but quantifying them remains challenging. Here, we present a pipeline based on conformal geometry and Teichmüller theory for the quantitative characterization of human retinotopic maps. We describe steps for cortical surface parameterization and surface-spline-based smoothing. We then detail Beltrami coefficient-based mapping, which provides a quantitative and re-constructible description of the retinotopic maps. This framework has been successfully used to analyze the Human Connectome Project's V1 retinotopic maps. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Ta et al. (2022).¹.