Shape Analysis Toolbox for Medical Image Computing Projects

 描述（由申请人提供）：本申请中提出的工作旨在继续维护、扩展、验证和传播SPHARM-PDM（球面HARMonics点分布式模型）形状分析工具箱。形状分析是高度感兴趣的生物医学科学，由于其潜在的精确定位病理结构的形态变化。SPHARM-PDM是一个成功和流行的开源软件工具，已被生物医学研究界用于分析解剖结构的形态。大多数现有的形状分析包缺乏与公开可用的分割软件工具的集成，并且通常使用起来非常复杂。这些是形状分析研究主要由大型实验室或与专门从事形状分析的计算机科学家密切合作进行的主要原因。有了这个建议，我们期待保持的核心功能，使SPHARM-PDM成功的工具箱，以及提供一个紧密的集成与重要的分割包和显着扩展工具箱成一个通用的形状分析工具箱（形状分析工具箱，盐）。新方法将为非球形拓扑、骨架模型、四维（4D）模型和研究特定的最佳模型对应的对象提供支持。然后，将使用三个应用案例情景测试SALT的所有新方法，以评估拟议新功能的功效，并为用户群体提供可用性和最佳做法的说明。在主要的开发和维护工作的同时，我们将继续提供优秀的文档，社区资源和用户支持。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The work proposed in this application aims to continue the maintenance, expansion, validation and dissemination of the SPHARM-PDM (SPherical HARMonics Point Distributed Models) shape analysis toolbox. Shape analysis is of high interest to the biomedical sciences due to its potential to precisely locate morphological changes in pathological structures. SPHARM-PDM is a successful and popular open-source software tool that has been used by the biomedical research community to analyze the morphology of anatomical structures. Most of the existing shape analysis packages lack of integration with publicly available segmentation software tools and are very complicated to use in general. These are the main reasons why shape analysis studies have been performed mainly by larger labs or through close collaboration with computer scientists that specialize in shape analysis. With this proposal we look into maintaining the core functionalities that made of SPHARM-PDM a successful toolbox, as well as into providing a close integration with important segmentation packages and dramatically extending the toolbox into a general shape analysis toolbox (Shape AnaLysis Toolbox, SALT). New methodologies will provide support for objects of non-spherical topology, skeletal models, four-dimensional (4D) models, and study-specific optimal model correspondence. All new methodologies of SALT will be then tested using three application case scenarios to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed new functionalities and to provide an illustration of usability and best practices for the user community. In parallel with th major development and maintenance efforts, we will continue providing excellent documentation, community resources, and user support.