Global Medical Shape Analysis Using the Volumetric Laplace Spectrum

M. Reuter, M. Niethammer, F. E. Wolter, S. Bouix, M. E. Shenton
Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Cyberworlds
Pages 417-426
2007

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Abstract

This paper proposes to use the volumetric Laplace spectrum as a global shape descriptor for medical shape analysis. The approach allows for shape comparisons using minimal shape preprocessing. In particular, no registration, mapping, or remeshing is necessary. All computations can be performed directly on the voxel representations of the shapes. The discriminatory power of the method is tested on a population of female caudate shapes (brain structure) of normal control disorder. The behavior and properties of the volumetric Laplace spectrum are discussed extensively for both the Dirichlet and Neumann boundary condition showing advantages of the Neumann spectra. Both, the computations of spectra on 3D voxel data for shape matching as well as the use of the Neumann spectrum for shape analysis are completely new.

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Reference

Reuter M, Niethammer M, Wolter FE, Bouix S, Shenton ME. Global medical shape analysis using the volumetric laplace spectrum. In Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Cyberworlds, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. IEEE CW, 2007;417-426.

Grants

NIH R01 MH50747, K05 MH070047, U54 EB005149

Research area

shapeanalysis