Measurement of biological shape: a general method applied to mouse vertebrae

A method is described for recording and analysing the projected shape of mouse vertebrae. The image of the shape is captured by a television camera, cleaned, digitized and subjected to mathematical analysis. A visual representation is obtained by reconstructing the shape in polar coordinates about its centre of area. Further statistical analysis of the whole shape is performed after a Fourier transform. This allows the shape to be represented by and reconstructed from 15 numbers. The method does not rely on homologous points or expert opinion and allows mean shapes to be constructed. It successfully distinguished between 92% of the test data, T1 and T2 vertebrae from two strains of mice.