Alternative method for binary shape alignment of non-symmetrical shapes based on minimal enclosing box

Proposed is a novel method based on the minimal enclosing box (MEB) to determine the canonical orientation associated with a three-dimensional binary shape. It is suggested that, when the shape has no clear distinctive features and two or more of the eigenvalues are similar, this method is more suitable than the commonly used method based on principal component analysis (PCA). An experiment is performed with shapes of human livers by measuring the degree on which a prototypical image (atlas) matches to a new shape after alignment by PCA, minimal area projection (MAP), and MEB showing that in this case MEB outperforms the usual PCA-based alignment method and also the MAP method.