Regression Modelling of Shape Through Triangulation

Recalling the definition of shape as a point on hyper-sphere, proposed by Kendall, the regression model is studied in this paper. In order to simplify the modeling, the triangulation via two landmarks is proposed. The triangulation not only simplifies the regression modelling of the shapes but also provides straightforward computation procedure to reconstruct geometrical structure of the objects. Novelty of the proposed method in this paper is on using the predictor variable, based upon the shape, which suitably describes the geometrical variability of the response. The comparison and evaluation of the proposed methods with the full Procrustes matching through the mean square error criteria are done. Application of two models for the configurations of rat skulls is investigated.