Dear FreeSurfer experts,

I have a question about the interpretation of the vertex-wise area metric. For instance, if Vertex A had a larger area than Vertex B, then what's the difference between Vertex A and Vertex B biologically? 

Based on my simple (probably wrong) understanding of the surface reconstruction process, the initial surface was created based on the GM-WM boundary voxels, in which the face of a voxel was divided into two triangles and the area of the triangles was equal. But after the refinement of the initial surface, the triangle area was not uniform any more. So what factors may explain the expansion or contraction of the surface triangles? I believe these factors may help me understand the vertex-wise area metric. Maybe I should treat the vertex and the triangles around it as a whole, which is the unit of comparison. For instance, the Vertex A having a larger area means the area of triangels around Vertex A is larger. This kind of interpretation would make the comparsion between Vertex A and B biologically meaningless.

From another perspective, in the voxel-based morphometry (VBM), the voxel size is fixed and the volume is the proportion or probability of GM (or other tissue types) in the voxel. In the surface case, if the triangle size is kept fixed, the area is proportial to the number of triangles, which is conceptually similar to the VBM approach. Why FreeSurfer did not choose this kind of approach? Sorry if this question is not reasonable, as I did not have a strong technical background.

Best,

Yang Hu