Laplace-Beltrami shape analysis of ocular or wavefront surfaces.

Shape analysis techniques are widely used in different biomedical fields when processing surface shape properties. The Laplace-Beltrami operator, as an extension of the Laplacian to surfaces, enables the revelation of geometrical properties related to surface curvature through its spectral decomposition, thus proving itself to be a promising tool in visual optics. I introduce Laplace-Beltrami shape analysis for ocular, or wavefront, surfaces of the human eye, described as meshes. I present a set of techniques and their numerical implementation for this purpose. Two particular tools, spectral decomposition and shape-DNA analysis, are explained in detail and illustrated with an example of application: a keratoconus cornea model.