Abstract
Most digital models of the equine distal limb that are available in the community are static and/or subject specific; hence, they have limited applications in veterinary research. In this paper, we present an articulatable model of the entire equine distal limb based on statistical shape modeling. The model describes the inter-subject variability in bone geometry while maintaining proper jointspace distances to support model articulation toward different poses. Shape variation modes are explained in terms of common biometrics in order to ease model interpretation from a veterinary point of view. The model is publicly available through a graphical user interface (https://github.com/jvhoutte/equisim) in order to facilitate future digitalization in veterinary research, such as computer-aided designs, three-dimensional printing of bone implants, bone fracture risk assessment through finite element methods, and data registration and segmentation problems for clinical practices.
Highlights
Digital three-dimensional (3D) anatomical models have become an important aspect in the digitalization of veterinary research and medical practices [1]
They are measured from radiographs [7, 8], magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data [9], photographs [8, 9], or from in-situ measurements in vivo [10, 11] or post-mortem [12]. Another way to study morphology variations is by means of statistical shape models (SSMs), which encode the 3D shape variation of the complete bone geometry, rather than reducing the shape to a limited set of discrete measures [13]. The benefit of this representation, compared to linear biometrics, is that the statistical shape variability is defined as variation modes of the geometry itself, such that it can be exploited in numerous computer vision applications
The compactness shows the cumulative variance explained by the statistical modes
Summary
Digital three-dimensional (3D) anatomical models have become an important aspect in the digitalization of veterinary research and medical practices [1]. A standard procedure in morphological studies of equine distal limb anatomical structures focuses on one-dimensional linear or angular measures, such as hoof angle, hoof length, mediallateral width of the phalanges, and so on, or two-dimensional measures, such as the joint surface They are measured from radiographs [7, 8], MRI data [9], photographs [8, 9], or from in-situ measurements in vivo [10, 11] or post-mortem [12]. These (articulating) SSMs have been widely adopted for training segmentation
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