What is ShapeWorks?

ShapeWorks is an open-source software platform for statistical shape modeling and analysis. It is designed to construct compact statistical models from ensembles of complex 3D shapes, then enable detailed analysis of those models and simulation of new shape instances.

The key capabilities of ShapeWorks include:

• Building statistical shape models from sets of triangle meshes, segmentations, or point cloud data
• Representing shape variation in a compact, analytic way using principal component analysis (PCA)
• Analyzing the major modes of variation within a shape model using PCA spectra and sampling
• Simulating random new shape instances that resemble the training data
• Estimating correspondence across a dataset using groupwise registration

These functions make ShapeWorks a valuable tool for researchers across medical imaging, anatomy, biology, paleontology, and other fields that utilize 3D structural data. Example applications include:

• Studying anatomical variation in organs/tissues across patients or populations
• Examining changes in anatomy across timepoints or conditions
• Statistical modeling for segmentation and landmark detection tasks
• Generating synthetic training data for machine learning algorithms
• Quantitative phenotyping for basic science and genetic research

ShapeWorks implements industry standard techniques like entropy-based particle correspondence and principal geodesic analysis. It also introduces innovations like hamiltonian shape statistics. The software is open-source, with an active developer community working to expand its capabilities.

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