Varying Shape extraction from data

I have some data and it traces out a shape of sorts. It varies dynamically however and I am hoping to work out the average shape. I am trying to extract the 'shape' of each dataset and the specifications then use an average of these specifications to map put an average shape. Could anyone point me in the right direction regarding alogirthms. I have already looked Elliptic Fourier stuff but I am dealing with rela-life datasets.