Shape Analysis

Starting with my PhD I worked in the area of Shape Analysis and developed a new method based on spectral values of the shapes. I take the spectrum of the Laplace-Beltrami Operator as a shape descriptor for the analysis of shape differences. The main advantage is that this descriptor is isometry invariant. Isometry invariance means that distances measured on the surface stay the same. So a hand with different finger positions or a person in different postures will be almost isometric, as not much streching is involved. The distance from the nose to the foot will stay the same in all positions, if measured along the surface (as opposed to measuring it in the embedding space).
Thus we are able to identify similar objects even if they cannot be aligned/compared with rigid transformation!

Have a try and check out database I or database II of non-rigid shapes and see how this methods finds the shapes from the same group first.