Parametric Shape Modeling of Femurs Using Statistical Shape Analysis

Creation of a human skeleton model and characterization of the variation in the bone shape are fundamentally important in many applications of biomechanics. In this paper, we present a parametric shape modeling method for femurs that is based on extracting the main parameter of variations of the femur shape from a 3D model database by using statistical shape analysis. For this shape analysis, principal component analysis (PCA) is used. Application of the PCA to 3D data requires bringing all the models in correspondence to each other. For this reason, anatomical landmarks are used for guiding the deformation of the template model to fit the 3D model data. After subsequent application of PCA to a set of femur models, we calculate the correlation between the dominant components of shape variability for a target population and the anatomical parameters of the femur shape. Finally, we provide tools for visualizing and creating the femur shape using the main parameter of femur shape variation.