title: A Landmark-Free Method for Three-Dimensional Shape Analysis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The tools and techniques used in morphometrics have always aimed to transform the physical shape of an object into a concise set of numerical data for mathematical analysis. The advent of landmark-based morphometrics opened new avenues of research, but these methods are not without drawbacks. The time investment required of trained individuals to accurately landmark a data set is significant, and the reliance on readily-identifiable physical features can hamper research efforts. This is especially true of those investigating smooth or featureless surfaces.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this paper, we present a new method to perform this transformation for data obtained from high-resolution scanning technology. This method uses surface scans, instead of landmarks, to calculate a shape difference metric analogous to Procrustes distance and perform superimposition. This is accomplished by building upon and extending the Iterative Closest Point algorithm. We also explore some new ways this data can be used; for example, we can calculate an averaged surface directly and visualize point-wise shape information over this surface. Finally, we briefly demonstrate this method on a set of primate skulls and compare the results of the new methodology with traditional geometric morphometric analysis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Scientific Computing, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, United States of America.
authors.forename: Benjamin J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Pomidor
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jana
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Makedonska
authors.affiliation: Department of Scientific Computing, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, United States of America.|Department of Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Dennis E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Slice
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D008962:Models, Theoretical