Construction and analysis of a head CT-scan database for craniofacial reconstruction

This paper is devoted to the construction of a complete database which is intended to improve the implementation and the evaluation of automated facial reconstruction. This growing database is currently composed of 85 head CT-scans of healthy European subjects aged 20-65 years old. It also includes the triangulated surfaces of the face and the skull of each subject. These surfaces are extracted from CT-scans using an original combination of image-processing techniques which are presented in the paper. Besides, a set of 39 referenced anatomical skull landmarks were located manually on each scan. Using the geometrical information provided by triangulated surfaces, we compute facial soft-tissue depths at each known landmark positions. We report the average thickness values at each landmark and compare our measures to those of the traditional charts of [J. Rhine, C.E. Moore, Facial Tissue Thickness of American Caucasoids, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1982] and of several recent in vivo studies [M.H. Manhein, G.A. Listi, R.E. Barsley, et al., In vivo facial tissue depth measurements for children and adults, journal of Forensic Sciences 45 (1) (2000) 48-60; S. De Greef, P. Claes, D. Vandermeulen, et aL, Large-scale in vivo Caucasian facial soft tissue thickness database for craniofacial reconstruction, Forensic Science International 159S (2006) S126-S146; R. Helmer, Schodelidentifizierung durch elektronische bildmischung, Kriminalistik Verlag GmbH, Heidelberg, 1984]. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.