Statistical Shape Analysis

Statistical shape analysis is a geometrical analysis from a set of shapes in which statistics are measured to describe geometrical properties from similar shapes or different groups, for instance, the difference between male and female Gorilla skull shapes, normal and pathological bone shapes, etc. Some of the important aspects of shape analysis are to obtain a measure of distance between shapes, to estimate average shapes from a (possibly random) sample, also called mean shape, and to estimate shape variability in a sample. One of the main methods used is principal component analysis. Also some procedures for testing the differences of shapes are used, even for small samples. Some applications of Shape Analysis on oncology, on sensor measurement and on geographical profiling are already made