  We study shift relations between Feynman integrals via the Mellin transform
through parametric annihilation operators. These contain the momentum space IBP
relations, which are well-known in the physics literature. Applying a result of
Loeser and Sabbah, we conclude that the number of master integrals is computed
by the Euler characteristic of the Lee-Pomeransky polynomial. We illustrate
techniques to compute this Euler characteristic in various examples and compare
it with numbers of master integrals obtained in previous works.
