Biological processes like growth, aging, and disease progression are generally studied with follow-up scans taken at different time points, i.e., with image time series (TS) based analysis. Comparison between TS representing a biological process of two individuals/populations is of interest. A metric to quantify the difference between TS is desirable for such a comparison. The two TS represent the evolution of two different subject/population average anatomies through two paths. A method to untangle and quantify the path and inter-subject anatomy(shape) difference between the TS is presented in this paper. The proposed metric is a generalized version of Fr\'echet distance designed to compare curves. The proposed method is evaluated with simulated and adult and fetal neuro templates. Results show that the metric is able to separate and quantify the path and shape differences between TS.

翻译：生物过程,如生长、老龄化和疾病演变,通常通过在不同时间点进行后续扫描,即图像时间序列(TS)分析来研究。代表两个个人/人口生物过程的TS之间的比较很有意义。为进行这种比较,有必要用一个衡量尺度来量化TS之间的差异。两个TS代表两个不同的主体/人口平均解剖通过两个路径的演进。本文介绍了解开和量化TS之间路径和相向解剖(形状)差异的方法。拟议的衡量尺度是用于比较曲线的Fr\'echet距离的通用版本。拟议方法用模拟、成人和胎儿神经模板进行评估。结果显示,该尺度能够分离和量化TS之间的路径和形状差异。