In this paper we introduce and compare different approaches for incorporating shape prior information into neural network based image segmentation. Specifically, we introduce the concept of template transformer networks where a shape template is deformed to match the underlying structure of interest through an end-to-end trained spatial transformer network. This has the advantage of explicitly enforcing shape priors and is free of discretisation artefacts by providing a soft partial volume segmentation. We also introduce a simple yet effective way of incorporating priors in state-of-the-art pixel-wise binary classification methods such as fully convolutional networks and U-net. Here, the template shape is given as an additional input channel, incorporating this information significantly reduces false positives. We report results on synthetic data and sub-voxel segmentation of coronary lumen structures in cardiac computed tomography showing the benefit of incorporating priors in neural network based image segmentation.