Analyzing infant head flatness and asymmetry using kernel density estimation of directional surface data from a craniofacial 3D model

作者：Vuollo Ville^*; Holmstrom Lasse; Aarnivala Henri; Harila Virpi; Heikkinen Tuomo; Pirttiniemi Pertti; Valkama Arja Marita

来源：Statistics in Medicine, 2016, 35(26): 4891-4904.

DOI：10.1002/sim.7032

• 3D shape analysis
• 3D surface imaging
• directional statistics
• head shape
• kernel density estimation
• spherical data

Infant skull deformation is analyzed using the distribution of head normal vector directions computed from a 3D image. Severity of flatness and asymmetry are quantified by functionals of the kernel estimate of the normal vector direction density. Using image data from 99 infants and clinical deformation ratings made by experts, our approach is compared with some recently suggested methods. The results show that the proposed method performs competitively.