Project Description:
Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS) characterized by the 3D spine
deformity affects about 4% schoolchildren worldwide. One of the prominent
theories of the etiopathogenesis of AIS was proposed to
be the poor postural balance control due to the impaired vestibular function.
Thus, the morphometry of the vestibular system (VS) is of great importance
for studying AIS. The VS is a genus-3 structure situated in
the inner ear and consists of three semicircular canals lying perpendicular
to each other. The high-genus topology of the surface poses great challenge
for shape analysis. In this work, we propose an effective method to analyze
shapes of high-genus surfaces by considering their geodesic spectra. The
key is to compute the canonical hyperbolic geodesic loops of the surface,
using the Ricci flow method. The Fuchsian group generators are then computed
which can be used to determine the geodesic spectra. The geodesic spectra
effectively measure shape differences between highgenus surfaces up to the
hyperbolic isometry. We applied the proposed algorithm to the VS of 12 normal
and 15 AIS subjects. Experimental results
show the effectiveness of our algorithm and reveal statistical shape difference
in the VS between right-thoracic AIS and normal subjects.
Publication:
Result: