Background: In previous work, the authors described a software package for the digitisation of 3D landmarks for use in geometric morphometrics. In this paper, we describe extensions to this software that allow semi-automatic localisation of 3D landmarks, given a database of manually annotated training images. Multi-stage registration was applied to align image patches from the database to a query image, and the results from multiple database images were combined using an array-based voting scheme. The software automatically highlights points that have been located with low confidence, allowing manual correction.Results: Evaluation was performed on micro-CT images of rodent skulls for which two independent sets of manual landmark annotations had been performed. This allowed assessment of landmark accuracy in terms of both the distance between manual and automatic annotations, and the repeatability of manual and automatic annotation. Automatic annotation attained accuracies equivalent to those achievable through manual annotation by an expert for 87.5% of the points, with significantly higher repeatability.Conclusions: Whilst user input was required to produce the training data and in a final error correction stage, the software was capable of reducing the number of manual annotations required in a typical landmark identification process using 3D data by a factor of ten, potentially allowing much larger data sets to be annotated and thus increasing the statistical power of the results from subsequent processing e.g. Procrustes/principal component analysis. The software is freely available, under the GNU General Public Licence, from our web-site (www.tina-vision.net).

BackgroundInterest in the placing of landmarks and subsequent morphometric analyses of shape for 3D data has increased with the increasing accessibility of computed tomography (CT) scanners. However, current computer programs for this task suffer from various practical drawbacks. We present here a free software tool that overcomes many of these problems.ResultsThe TINA Manual Landmarking Tool was developed for the digitization of 3D data sets. It enables the generation of a modifiable 3D volume rendering display plus matching orthogonal 2D cross-sections from DICOM files. The object can be rotated and axes defined and fixed. Predefined lists of landmarks can be loaded and the landmarks identified within any of the representations. Output files are stored in various established formats, depending on the preferred evaluation software.ConclusionsThe software tool presented here provides several options facilitating the placing of landmarks on 3D objects, including volume rendering from DICOM files, definition and fixation of meaningful axes, easy import, placement, control, and export of landmarks, and handling of large datasets. The TINA Manual Landmark Tool runs under Linux and can be obtained for free from http://www.tina-vision.net/tarballs/.

Large image deformations pose a challenging problem for the visualization and statistical analysis of 3D image ensembles which have a multitude of applications in biology and medicine. Simple linear interpolation in the tangent space of the ensemble introduces artifactual anatomical structures that hamper the application of targeted visual shape analysis techniques. In this work we make use of the theory of stationary velocity fields to facilitate interactive non-linear image interpolation and plausible extrapolation for high quality rendering of large deformations and devise an efficient image warping method on the GPU. This does not only improve quality of existing visualization techniques, but opens up a field of novel interactive methods for shape ensemble analysis. Taking advantage of the efficient non-linear 3D image warping, we showcase four visualizations: 1) browsing on-the-fly computed group mean shapes to learn about shape differences between specific classes, 2) interactive reformation to investigate complex morphologies in a single view, 3) likelihood volumes to gain a concise overview of variability and 4) streamline visualization to show variation in detail, specifically uncovering its component tangential to a reference surface. Evaluation on a real world dataset shows that the presented method outperforms the state-of-the-art in terms of visual quality while retaining interactive frame rates. A case study with a domain expert was performed in which the novel analysis and visualization methods are applied on standard model structures, namely skull and mandible of different rodents, to investigate and compare influence of phylogeny, diet and geography on shape. The visualizations enable for instance to distinguish (population-)normal and pathological morphology, assist in uncovering correlation to extrinsic factors and potentially support assessment of model quality.

Gaining insight into anatomic covariation helps the understanding of organismic shape variability in general and is of particular interest for delimiting morphological modules. Generation of hypotheses on structural covariation is undoubtedly a highly creative process, and as such, requires an exploratory approach. In this work we propose a new local anatomic covariance tensor which enables interactive visualizations to explore covariation at different levels of detail, stimulating rapid formation and (qualitative) evaluation of hypotheses. The effectiveness of the presented approach is demonstrated on a muCT dataset of mouse mandibles for which results from the literature are successfully reproduced, while providing a more detailed representation of covariation compared to state-of-the-art methods

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