Implicit Neural Distance Representation for Unsupervised and Supervised Classification of Complex Anatomies

The task of 3D shape classification is closely related to finding a good representation of the shapes. In this study, we focus on surface representations of complex anatomies and on how such representations can be utilized for super- and unsupervised classification. We present a novel Implicit Neural Distance Representation based on unsigned distance fields (UDFs).

The UDFs can be embedded into a low-dimensional latent space, which is optimized using only the shape itself. We demonstrate that this self-optimized latent space holds important global shape information useful for reconstructing the anatomies, but also that unsupervised clustering of the latent vectors successfully separates different anatomies (left atrium, left/right ear-canals and human faces).

Finally, we show how the representation can be used to do gender classification of human face geometries, which is a notoriously hard problem.