Non-Rigid Point Set Registration Based Masticatory Muscle Deformation Measurement

The measurement of muscle deformation is important to evaluate muscle functional activities. In this study, we present a new method to measure and visualize individual masticatory muscle deformation. The proposed method first employs five reliable non-rigid point set registration methods to measure the muscle deformation, respectively, and the most accurate measured deformation is selected by a two-level validation method. The selected measurement of muscle deformation is then used to visualize and evaluate muscle functional activities for individual diagnosis. A total of 24 muscle deformations of 2 subjects was investigated. The proposed method gave accurate results, and appropriately and meaningfully describes the muscle functional activities for each subject.