An integrated approach to 3D facial reconstruction from ancient skull

Powerful techniques for modelling and rendering tridimensional organic shapes, like human body, are today available for applications in many fields such as special effects, ergonomic simulation or medical visualization, just to name a few. These techniques are proving to be very useful also to archaeologists and anthropologists committed to reconstruct the aspect of the inhabitants of historically relevant sites like Pompei. This paper shows how, starting from radiological analysis of an ancient skull and a database of modem individuals of the same area/gender/age, it is possible to produce a tridimensional facial model compatible to the anthropological and craniometrical features of the original skull.