@CONFERENCE\{IMM2002-0860, author = "R. R. Paulsen and R. Larsen and S. Laugesen and C. Nielsen and B. K. Ersb{\o}ll", title = "Building and Testing a Statistical Shape Model of the Human Ear Canal", year = "2002", keywords = "statistical shape analysis, Thin Plate Spline Warp, Registration, Procrustes, Horns Parallel Analysis", booktitle = "Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention - {MICCAI} 2002, 5th Int. Conference, Tokyo, Japan,", volume = "", series = "", editor = "", publisher = "Springer", organization = "", address = "", url = "http://www2.compute.dtu.dk/pubdb/pubs/860-full.html", abstract = "Today the design of custom in-the-ear hearing aids is based on personal experience and skills and not on a systematic description of the variation of the shape of the ear canal. In this paper it is described how a dense surface point distribution model of the human ear canal is built based on a training set of laser scanned ear impressions and a sparse set of anatomical landmarks placed by an expert. The landmarks are used to warp a template mesh onto all shapes in the training set. Using the vertices from the warped meshes, a {3D} point distribution model is made. The model is used for testing for gender related differences in size and shape of the ear canal." }