Procrustesalso

Procrustesalso is a term that appears sporadically in informal discussions and some non-peer‑reviewed sources, but it is not established as a distinct technique in statistics or computer science. In most references, the phrase is a misspelling or misnomer for Procrustes analysis or Generalized Procrustes Analysis (GPA).

Procrustes analysis refers to a family of methods for shape analysis that aims to remove non-shape differences between configurations of points by translating, rotating, and optionally scaling. The objective is to minimize a distance between shapes under a chosen transformation, allowing comparison of geometric configurations independent of position, orientation, and size. Variants may employ rigid or similarity transforms, depending on whether scaling is included.

Generalized Procrustes Analysis extends these ideas to more than two configurations. It seeks a common mean shape by iteratively aligning all configurations to a shared reference and updating that reference until convergence. GPA is widely used in fields such as biology, morphometrics, computer vision, and pattern recognition to study geometric variation across multiple specimens or samples.

Because Procrustesalso lacks a standardized definition, researchers encountering the term should verify the intended meaning with the source and consider whether Procrustes analysis or GPA is the correct reference. If the term was encountered in software documentation or a specific paper, that context may clarify whether it denotes a misspelling, a shorthand, or a local convention.

See also: Procrustes analysis; Generalized Procrustes Analysis; Procrustes distance; Shape analysis.