Methodology for the construction and comparison of 3D models of the human cornea

This paper describes a methodology to build and compare 3D models (or atlases) of the cornea for specific populations. Using topography data of the anterior and posterior corneal surfaces, average and statistical variation maps are computed after registration of individual corneas on a reference sphere. With this methodology, a normal population model is constructed and compared with known eye anatomic data. Comparison of left and right eyes is also performed to see their natural symmetry. Our results demonstrate that spatial normalization is an important step for corneal atlas construction and comparison.