Automatic 3D Shape Severity Quantification and Localization for Deformational Plagiocephaly.

Recent studies have shown an increase in the occurrence of deformational plagiocephaly and brachycephaly in children. This increase has coincided with the "Back to Sleep" campaign that was introduced to reduce the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). However, there has yet to be an objective quantification of the degree of severity for these two conditions. Most diagnoses are done on subjective factors such as patient history and physician examination. The existence of an objective quantification would help research in areas of diagnosis and intervention measures, as well as provide a tool for finding correlation between the shape severity and cognitive outcome. This paper describes a new shape severity quantification and localization method for deformational plagiocephaly and brachycephaly. Our results show that there is a positive correlation between the new shape severity measure and the scores entered by a human expert.