High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The point distribution model is a model for representing the mean geometry of a shape and some statistical modes of geometric variation inferred from a training set of shapes. It has been developed by Cootes, Taylor et al. and became a standard in computer vision for the statistical study of shape[3] and for segmentation of medical images where shape priors really help interpretation of noisy and low-contrasted pixels/voxels. The latter point leads to active shape models (ASM) and active appearance models (AAM). Point distribution models rely on landmark points. A landmark is an annotating point posed by an anatomist onto a given locus for every shape instance across the training set population. For instance, the same landmark will designate the tip of the index in a training set of 2D hands outlines. Principal component analysis (PCA), for instance, is a relevant tool for studying correlations of movement between groups of landmarks among the training set population.