Explorations of the motion and geometry of the human knee

An anatomical statistical atlas quantitatively describes anatomical variations in a set of individuals. This work presents a novel statistical motion atlas of the human knee. Using this atlas we can qualitatively describe the principal variations in the motion of the human knee.; We can also quantitatively compare the motion of any set of knees by examining how much each principal variation contributes to the motion of each knee we are comparing. We also present a shape atlas for each of the bones of the knee: the femur, tibia, and patella. This atlas allows us to qualitatively describe their variations in shape, and quantitatively compare any set of bones. This work describes both the data and the methods used to build these atlases, and explores the principal variations in both.; We go on to leverage these two techniques to compare the left and right knees of an individual to any two knees from the population. We also present a study of the robustness of assigning anatomical coordinate systems to the femur, tibia, and patella.