The present invention relates to a device for encoding an anatomical shape (13) of a living being, comprising a receiving unit (12) for receiving an anatomical shape (13); a shape representation generating unit (14) for generating a shape representation of the anatomical shape (13) by using one or more shape representation models and determining the value of one or more shape representation coefficients of the one or more shape representation models; and a conversion unit (16) for converting the determined value of the one or more shape representation coefficients into a human-readable code comprising one or more human-readable characters.