An Analysis Technique for Biological Shape. I

An analysis technique for biological shape based on the concept of bending energy has been developed. The technique permits the calculation of the amount of energy (work) that would have to be expended to form typical biological shapes out of a linear, thin-shelled medium. In addition the development of this analysis procedure provides several new results concerning image processing including a sampling theorem for simply connected closed contours and a fast algorithm for calculation of the bending energy.