Designers of headgear often still have to rely on outdated anthropometric tables which offer only univariate measurements and very limited information about the variability of the human head. Promising solutions exist to supplement these tables with more complete 3D data, and several 3D model databases are currently on the market.
The clavicle is among the most frequently fractured bones in the human body and there is an increasing number of indications for surgical treatment of clavicular fractures. Due to the complex shape of the clavicle and its large variability, the design of osteosynthesis hardware is a very challenging task. Extensive knowledge of the anatomy of the clavicle clearly contributes to the improvement of such hardware.
Virtual colonoscopy is a minimally invasive alternative for conventional optical colonoscopy to detect diseases of the colon, including polyps, diverticulosis, and cancer. In virtual colonoscopy computer tomography is combined with specialized visualization techniques in order to provide the physician with a comprehensive view of the colon wall. Due to the tortuous nature of the colon, the traditionally used fly-through visualization is time consuming and error prone.
Statistical Shape Models capture the shape variation of a training set of shapes and can be registered to an image of an object of the class they represent by simple adjustment of their parameters. We have applied statistical shape models of healthy tracheas to the assessment and stenting of tracheal stenosis. The idea is that a model with healthy tracheas only will not be influenced by local geometric variations typical of stenosis. The model produces a shape that is an estimation of the shape of the patient's trachea if it were not narrowed.
