Global Medical Shape Analysis Using the Laplace-Beltrami Spectrum

This paper proposes to use the Laplace-Beltrami spectrum (LBS) as a global shape descriptor for medical shape analysis, allowing for shape comparisons using minimal shape preprocessing: no registration, mapping, or remeshing is necessary. The discriminatory power of the method is tested on a population of female caudate shapes of normal control subjects and of subjects with schizotypal personality disorder. 1 Motivation and Background Morphometric studies of brain structures have classically been based on volume measurements. More recently, shape studies of gray matter brain structures have become popular. Methodologies for shape comparison may be divided into global and local shape analysis approaches. While local shape comparisons [1, 2] yield powerful, spatially localized results that are relatively straightforward to interpret, they usually rely on a number of preprocessing steps: one-to-one correspondences between surfaces need to be established, shapes need to be registered and r...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: MICCAI
• Authors: Marc Niethammer, Martin Reuter, Franz-Erich Wolter, Sylvain Bouix, Niklas Peinecke, Min-Seong Koo, Martha Elizabeth Shenton
• Keywords: Global Shape Comparison, Global Shape Descriptor, Global Shape Descriptors, Medical Imaging, MICCAI 2007