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Abstract The ear canal is usually described as an S-shaped funnel. In attempting to classify ear-canal shapes obtained from point clouds digitized from molds of 300 ears, the problem of designing criteria for distinguishing and organizing the canal shapes arose. In this work, we extracted features inspired by the S-shape characteristic (critical point, maximum, minimum, twist, writhe, translation, rotation) and, through them, introduced 14 types of ear-canal shapes. This classification allowed comparison of ears within a type and of ears between different types. It expanded our range of descriptors of canal shapes and unlocked perspectives for applications.