Geometric Morphometrics approach for classifying children's nutritional status on out of sample data

TL;DR

This paper introduces a geometric morphometrics method for classifying children's nutritional status from body shape images, addressing the challenge of applying classification rules to new, out-of-sample individuals.

Contribution

It proposes new techniques for obtaining shape coordinates for out-of-sample individuals and analyzes the impact of template configurations on classification accuracy.

Findings

Sample characteristics and variable collinearity are key for accurate classification.

Different template configurations significantly affect out-of-sample classification.

The approach supports development of an offline smartphone tool for nutritional screening.

Abstract

Current alignment-based methods for classification in geometric morphometrics do not generally address the classification of new individuals that were not part of the study sample. However, in the context of infant and child nutritional assessment from body shape images this is a relevant problem. In this setting, classification rules obtained on the shape space from a reference sample cannot be used on out-of-sample individuals in a straightforward way. Indeed, a series of sample dependent processing steps, such as alignment (Procrustes analysis, for instance) or allometric regression, need to be conducted before the classification rule can be applied. This work proposes ways of obtaining shape coordinates for a new individual and analyzes the effect of using different template configurations on the sample of study as target for registration of the out-of-sample raw coordinates. Understanding sample characteristics and collinearity among shape variables is crucial for optimal classification results when evaluating children's nutritional status using arm shape analysis from photos. The SAM Photo Diagnosis App\c{opyright} Program's goal is to develop an offline smartphone tool, enabling updates of the training sample across different nutritional screening campaigns.