Fast Template-based Shape Analysis Using Diffeomorphic Iterative Centroid

A common approach for the analysis of anatomical variability relies on the estimation of a representative template of the population, followed by the study of this population based on the parameters of the deformations going from the template to the population. The Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Metric Mapping framework is widely used for shape analysis of anatomical structures, but computing a template with such framework is computationally expensive. In this paper we propose a fast approach for templatebased analysis of anatomical variability. The template is estimated using a recently proposed iterative approach which quickly provides a centroid of the population. Statistical analysis is then performed using Kernel-PCA on the initial momenta that define the deformations between the centroid and each subject of the population. This approach is applied to the analysis of hippocampal shape on 80 patients with Alzheimer’s Disease and 138 controls from the ADNI database.