One of the frameworks used in shape space is to represent the data as landmarks.
Each shape is a point set of \(k\) points in \(\mathbf{R}^p\) where each
point is a labeled object. We consider general landmarks in \(p=2,3,\ldots\).
Note that when \(p > 2\), it is stratified space but we assume singularities do not exist or
are omitted. The wrapper takes translation and scaling out from the data to make it
preshape (centered, unit-norm). Also, for convenience, orthogonal
Procrustes analysis is applied with the first observation being the reference so
that all the other data are rotated to match the shape of the first.