Brain visualization
Brain images that hold up under scrutiny.
Scan-derived 3D models, interactive browser viewers, and anatomy figures, built by a neuroscientist who has spent twenty years reading the actual scans. Not stock anatomy with a red blob added.
The problem
Most brain graphics are a stock model with a red blob added.
Fine for a poster. A liability when the other side has an expert, when an investor asks where the anatomy came from, or when a regulator wants to know how the region was defined.
What you usually get
- A generic brain illustration, identical across every case and client
- An artist's approximation of where the injury sits
- No traceable link between the image and the patient's own imaging
- Nobody who can explain the method when it is challenged
What I make
- A model built from the subject's own MRI, CT, or DTI
- Anatomy defined by published atlases and named parcellations
- A documented pipeline, reproducible from the source scan
- A PhD who can explain and defend every step of it
Services
Four things I do.
Exhibits from the actual scan
Demonstratives for traumatic brain injury, stroke, and birth injury, rendered from the subject's own imaging rather than a generic model. Delivered with a written account of the method, in language a jury follows and an opposing expert cannot easily dismantle.
LitigationInteractive 3D viewers
A brain the viewer rotates, slices, and explodes, running in an ordinary browser with no plugin and no install. Built on brainWhiz, my own viewer, so the tool bends to the case rather than the other way round.
Neurotech · education · trialFigures and mechanism visuals
Anatomy and mechanism-of-action graphics for companies with a CNS product and no imaging staff. Investor decks, regulatory submissions, conference posters, and website assets, defensible because the underlying data is real.
Biotech · medtech · medical educationResearch IT infrastructure
Nine years running a multi-million-dollar 3T imaging centre, plus a three-node NVIDIA L40S GPU cluster. Scanner and capital equipment procurement, vendor selection, service contract economics, recharge and cost-recovery models, storage architecture for imaging data, DICOM to BIDS conversion at scale, and governance for controlled-access human subjects data. Advisory or hands-on.
Universities · core facilities · investorsLive viewer
Not a screenshot. Try it yourself.
This is brainWhiz, the viewer I built and maintain: 16 bundled atlases, NIfTI, GIFTI, FreeSurfer, tractography, 4D timeseries, glass brain, and DTI connectivity, all running client-side in your browser. The same engine produces the figures and exhibits below.
The viewer is a few hundred kilobytes, so it loads on request rather than on every page view.
Opens brainWhiz in place. Rotate, zoom, explode, switch atlases.
Prefer a full window? Open brainWhiz directly, or see the source on GitHub.
Selected work
Work.
A sample across the range: surface rendering, lesion mapping, tumor segmentation, and quantitative imaging. Client work shown with permission only.
Who this is for
Who I work with.
Trial lawyers
Plaintiff-side brain injury, stroke misdiagnosis, and birth injury. Also testifying physicians who need a demonstrative built around their own opinion.
Neurotech and biotech
Seed through Series B companies with a CNS product, real funding, and nobody in the building who can render a brain.
Research institutions
Universities, core facilities, and the investors who fund them, on imaging and compute infrastructure: what to buy, what it really costs to run, and why adoption stalls.
Medical education
CME providers, device training programs, museums, and clinics producing patient-facing material that has to be accurate.
About
About.
Roger D. Newman-Norlund, PhD. Chief Technology Officer at allt.ai, and Research Associate Professor in Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of South Carolina. Cognitive neuroscientist, PhD Dartmouth 2005. Twenty years in human neuroimaging, 90 peer-reviewed publications, more than 4,660 citations, h-index 31.
Directed the McCausland Center for Brain Imaging from 2017 to 2026, running 3T MRI operations, protocol development, and scanner procurement. Directs the Aging Brain Cohort study and is co-investigator on two active NIH R01 grants.
The unusual part is the combination. Medical illustrators produce beautiful images but cannot process a scan. Engineers can process a scan but cannot tell you whether the anatomy is right. I do both, and I wrote the viewer, which means one person on the invoice and no gap between the picture and the science behind it.
I also consult on research IT infrastructure, which is the operational side of the same twenty years: buying the scanners, running the cluster, and keeping the data governed. I also write for general audiences, most recently Insidious Intelligence: ChatGPT, Cognitive Agency, and the New Behavioral Addiction (2025), and have explained research on national television and radio. Useful if what you need is not just the image but someone who can stand up and explain it.
Full academic profile and publication list: rnorlund.github.io
Contact
Tell me what you need to show.
Describe the case or the product and what the viewer has to understand. I will tell you what is possible from the imaging you have, and what it costs, before you commit to anything.