The York Research Database

Virtual imaging, image manipulation and
morphometric methods are increasingly used
in medicine and the natural sciences. Virtual
imaging hardware and image manipulation
software allows us to readily visualise,
explore, alter, repair and study digital objects.
This suite of equipment and tools combined
with statistical tools for the study of form variation
and covariation using Procrustes based
analyses of landmark coordinates, geometric
morphometrics, makes possible a wide range
of studies of human variation pertinent to biomedicine.
These tools for imaging, quantifying
and analysing form have already led to
new insights into organismal growth, development
and evolution and offer exciting prospects
in future biomedical applications. This
chapter presents a review of commonly used
methods for digital acquisition, extraction and
landmarking of anatomical structures and of
the common geometric morphometric statistical
methods applied to investigate them: generalised
Procrustes analysis to derive shape
variables, principal component analysis to
examine patterns of variation, multivariate
regression to examine how form is influenced