-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Help with basic morphometric concepts. Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 16:59:30 +1100 From: Paul Sanfilippo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dear Morphometricians, I'm new to this discipline and am in the process of writing a review article for the commencement of a PhD. I come from an ophthalmic background and am planning on using EFA to assess variation in the shape of the optic disc (I posted several months ago for advice on this - thank you to those who responded). As part of this review I'm wanting to give some background information on GM as I'm wanting to publish in an ophthalmic journal, many of the readers of which I'm sure will have little or no knowledge of GM techniques. I've got a couple of concepts that I'm grappling with, and I can't find seem to find the information in related articles (probably too basic): 1. I came across this definition of Kendalls Shape Space; "the set of all possible shapes for given landmark configurations with the same number of landmarks and dimensions in figure space". Can someone explain this in lay terms? I understand the space is curved - but why? To capture more geometrical information I'm assuming. Also, what does 2p-4 and 3p-7 mean for 2 and 3D space respectively? 2. Is there a general consensus that GM techniques can be broadly divided into 2 groups, ie Landmark based and Boundary outline methods? Some papers I've read have only discussed Landmark techniques and I'm wondering where outline methods lay. 3. Can anyone recommend any introductory GM articles/books. I've read quite a few seminal papers in the field, but am finding the maths a little tough. Thanks in advance. Paul Sanfilippo [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Replies will be sent to the list. For more information visit http://www.morphometrics.org
