SPHARM

SPHARM is a software application to perform 3-dimensional spherical harmonic analyses of triangular mesh surfaces. The analyses performed in this package are described in Shen et al. (2009 Evolution, in press). Spherical harmonic analyses are a 3D extension of Fourier analyses that generate a 3D mathematical model of an object's surface.

To construct a spherical harmonic model of an object using SPHARM, a triangular mesh representation of the object and a set of landmarks are needed to define the object. The triangular mesh consists of a dense coverage of points (i.e., vertices) on the object's surface and lines connecting the points to form a complete set of triangles (i.e., faces) that define the surface. The landmarks are used to orient and register a series of objects relative to one another so that they can be compared.

SPHARM is written in Matlab (The Mathworks, Natick, Massachusetts). To run SPHARM, download the zip file from the link below.

If you do not have Matlab installed on your computer, the zip file also contains a Windows executable and a copy of the Matlab Compiler Runtime. Simply install the Matlab Compiler Runtime on your Windows machine and run SPHARM from the supplied executable.

Download SPHARM

If you download SPHARM, please send us an e-mail so that we can notify you of updates and changes.