Shape change analysis and shape modeling using three dimensional biomedical images

A method for computing material deformations from multidimensional images of a biological specimen undergoing shape changes is presented. The specimen data are segmented within the images and the domain of the specimen is parametrized. The parametrization is a material coordinate system for the specimen. Deformations of the material coordinate system are computed by minimizing an energy functional that is a linear combination of a brightness continuity constraint and a shape-change constraint based on differential geometric properties of the parametrization. The resulting parametrization completely describes the position and shape-change of the specimen for the entire image sequence. This approach was applied to images of a motile human white blood cell.<>