Computing the Uniform Component of Shape Variation

Abstract

Any change in shape of a configuration of landmark points in two or three dimensions includes a uniform component, a component that is a wholly linear (affine) transformation. The formulas for estimating this component have been standardized for two-dimensional data but not for three-dimensional data. We suggest estimating the component by way of the complementarity between the uniform component and the space of partial warps. The component can be estimated by regression in either one space or the other: regression on the partial warps, followed by their removal, or regression on a basis for the uniform component itself. Either of the new methods can be used for both two- and three-dimensional landmark data and thus generalize Bookstein's (1996, pages 153–168 in Advances in morphometrics [L. F. Marcus et al., eds.], Plenum, New York) linearized Procrustes formula for estimating the uniform component in two dimensions.