Qingqiong Deng

A novel skull registration based on global and local deformations for craniofacial reconstruction

Craniofacial reconstruction is important in forensic identification. It aims to estimate a facial appearance for human skeletal remains using the relationship between the soft tissue and the underlying bone structure. Various computerized methods have been developed in recent decades. An effective way is to deform a reference skull to the discovered skull, and then apply the same deformation to the skin associated with the reference skull to provide an approximate face for the discovered skull. For this method, the better the two skulls match each other, the more face-like the reconstructed skin surface will be. In this paper, we present a novel skull registration method that can match the two skulls closely, so as to improve the accuracy of the reconstruction. It combines both global and local deformations. A generic thin-plate spline (TPS)-based deformation, which is global, is applied first to roughly align the two skulls based on two groups of manually defined landmarks. Afterwards, the two skulls are largely matched, except some regions, on which some new landmarks are automatically marked. A compact support radial basis functions (CSRBF)-based deformation, which is local, will then be performed on these regions to adjust the initial alignment of the two skulls. Such adjustment can be repeatedly implemented until the two skulls have optimal alignment. In addition, all the skulls and face involved in the registration are represented by their single outer surfaces to facilitate the reconstruction procedure. The experiments demonstrate that our method can create a plausible face even when the reference skull is very different from the discovered skull. As a result, we can make full use of our database to provide multiple estimates for a principle components analysis (PCA) for the final reconstruction.

The production of digital and printed resources from multiple modalities using visualization and three-dimensional printing techniques.

PurposeVirtual digital resources and printed models have become indispensable tools for medical training and surgical planning. Nevertheless, printed models of soft tissue organs are still challenging to reproduce. This study adopts open source packages and a low-cost desktop 3D printer to convert multiple modalities of medical images to digital resources (volume rendering images and digital models) and lifelike printed models, which are useful to enhance our understanding of the geometric structure and complex spatial nature of anatomical organs.Materials and methodsNeuroimaging technologies such as CT, CTA, MRI, and TOF-MRA collect serial medical images. The procedures for producing digital resources can be divided into volume rendering and medical image reconstruction. To verify the accuracy of reconstruction, this study presents qualitative and quantitative assessments. Subsequently, digital models are archived as stereolithography format files and imported to the bundled software of the 3D printer. The printed models are produced using polylactide filament materials.ResultsWe have successfully converted multiple modalities of medical images to digital resources and printed models for both hard organs (cranial base and tooth) and soft tissue organs (brain, blood vessels of the brain, the heart chambers and vessel lumen, and pituitary tumor). Multiple digital resources and printed models were provided to illustrate the anatomical relationship between organs and complicated surrounding structures. Three-dimensional printing (3DP) is a powerful tool to produce lifelike and tangible models.ConclusionsWe present an available and cost-effective method for producing both digital resources and printed models. The choice of modality in medical images and the processing approach is important when reproducing soft tissue organs models. The accuracy of the printed model is determined by the quality of organ models and 3DP. With the ongoing improvement of printing techniques and the variety of materials available, 3DP will become an indispensable tool in medical training and surgical planning.

CUDA-based real-time hand gesture interaction and visualization for CT volume dataset using leap motion

Touchless interaction has received considerable attention in recent years with benefit of removing barriers of physical contact. Several approaches are available to achieve mid-air interactions. However, most of these techniques cause discomfort when the interaction method is not direct manipulation. In this paper, gestures based on unimanual and bimanual interactions with different tools for exploring CT volume dataset are designed to perform the similar tasks in realistic applications. Focus + context approach based on GPU volume ray casting by trapezoid-shaped transfer function is used for visualization and the level-of-detail technique is adopted for accelerating interactive rendering. Comparing the effectiveness and intuitiveness of interaction approach with others by experiments, ours has a better performance and superiority with less completion time. Moreover, the bimanual interaction with more advantages is timesaving when performing continuous exploration task.

The weighted landmark-based algorithm for skull identification

Computer aided craniofacial reconstruction plays an important role in criminal investigation. By comparing the 3D facial model produced by this technology with the picture database of missing persons, the identity of an unknown skull can be determined. In this paper, we propose a method to quantitatively analyze the quality of the facial landmarks for skull identification. Based on the quality analysis of landmarks, a new landmarkbased algorithm, which takes fully into account the different weights of the landmarks in the recognition, is proposed. Moreover, we can select an optimal recognition subset of landmarks to boost the recognition rate according to the recognition quality of landmarks. Experiments validate the proposed method.

Face Reconstruction from Skull Based on Partial Least Squares Regression

Craniofacial reconstruction can be applied in many fields such as forensic, archaeology etc. This paper proposes to learn the relationship between the face and the skull by Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR), and reconstruct a persons face skin from his skull using the relationship. In order to better represent shape variations of skulls and skins, we divide the skull and skin into five correspondent local feature regions respectively, and five mappings from the skull regions to the corresponding skin regions are obtained by PLSR. For an unknown skull, we can get five skin regions by the five mappings learned, and the face can be recovered by stitching the five skin regions. Experimental results validate the proposed method.

A regional method for craniofacial reconstruction based on coordinate adjustments and a new fusion strategy

Craniofacial reconstruction recreates a facial outlook from the cranium based on the relationship between the face and the skull to assist identification. But craniofacial structures are very complex, and this relationship is not the same in different craniofacial regions. Several regional methods have recently been proposed, these methods segmented the face and skull into regions, and the relationship of each region is then learned independently, after that, facial regions for a given skull are estimated and finally glued together to generate a face. Most of these regional methods use vertex coordinates to represent the regions, and they define a uniform coordinate system for all of the regions. Consequently, the inconsistence in the positions of regions between different individuals is not eliminated before learning the relationships between the face and skull regions, and this reduces the accuracy of the craniofacial reconstruction. In order to solve this problem, an improved regional method is proposed in this paper involving two types of coordinate adjustments. One is the global coordinate adjustment performed on the skulls and faces with the purpose to eliminate the inconsistence of position and pose of the heads; the other is the local coordinate adjustment performed on the skull and face regions with the purpose to eliminate the inconsistence of position of these regions. After these two coordinate adjustments, partial least squares regression (PLSR) is used to estimate the relationship between the face region and the skull region. In order to obtain a more accurate reconstruction, a new fusion strategy is also proposed in the paper to maintain the reconstructed feature regions when gluing the facial regions together. This is based on the observation that the feature regions usually have less reconstruction errors compared to rest of the face. The results demonstrate that the coordinate adjustments and the new fusion strategy can significantly improve the craniofacial reconstructions.

An automatic non-rigid registration method for dense surface models

In this paper, we present an automatic registration method to align the dense points of 3D surfaces, for example, faces. It combines global and local deformations. An iterative closest point (ICP)-based deformation, which is global, is applied first to roughly align the two surfaces. Afterwards, the two surfaces will match in some regions, but not the whole. So, a sequence of compact support radial basis functions (CSRBF)-based deformations, which are local, will be then performed on those mismatched regions as adjustments. The CSRBF-based deformation is landmark-based. The landmarks are automatically defined using the bilateral correspondences of the two surfaces, with the aim to reduce the differences between the two correspondences through the adjustments. As a result, an optimal alignment of the two surfaces will be achieved finally when a unique correspondence is established. The results of our proposed method and those obtained by ICP and TPS are compared. Improvements on accuracy of registration can be easily seen from the comparison.

3D craniofacial reconstruction using reference skull-face database

Craniofacial reconstruction is aiming at estimating the outlook of an unknown or an unidentified skull. In this paper, we present an approach of the craniofacial reconstruction of Chinese people. Firstly, we build a skull-face database and classify it in terms of age, area and gender. Then Thin-Plate spline (TPS) is adopted to achieve non-rigid registration between the unidentified skull and reference skull. however, the craniofacial result is determined by the choice of reference template. Here a statistic method is adopted to estimate outlook from subclass of skull-face database using Principle component analysis. In order to improve the accuracy of the result, we select the suitable organ (eyes, nose and mouth) for the statistic result based on anatomy principle from the database and achieve the organ and face integration to build the final outlook. Finally, we show some experiments of the algorithm.

Densely calculated facial soft tissue thickness for craniofacial reconstruction in Chinese adults

Craniofacial reconstruction (CFR) is used to recreate a likeness of original facial appearance for an unidentified skull; this technique has been applied in both forensics and archeology. Many CFR techniques rely on the average facial soft tissue thickness (FSTT) of anatomical landmarks, related to ethnicity, age, sex, body mass index (BMI), etc. Previous studies typically employed FSTT at sparsely distributed anatomical landmarks, where different landmark definitions may affect the contrasting results. In the present study, a total of 90,198 one-to-one correspondence skull vertices are established on 171 head CT-scans and the FSTT of each corresponding vertex is calculated (hereafter referred to as densely calculated FSTT) for statistical analysis and CFR. Basic descriptive statistics (i.e., mean and standard deviation) for densely calculated FSTT are reported separately according to sex and age. Results show that 76.12% of overall vertices indicate that the FSTT is greater in males than females, with the exception of vertices around the zygoma, zygomatic arch and mid-lateral orbit. These sex-related significant differences are found at 55.12% of all vertices and the statistically age-related significant differences are depicted between the three age groups at a majority of all vertices (73.31% for males and 63.43% for females). Five non-overlapping categories are given and the descriptive statistics (i.e., mean, standard deviation, local standard deviation and percentage) are reported. Multiple appearances are produced using the densely calculated FSTT of various age and sex groups, and a quantitative assessment is provided to examine how relevant the choice of FSTT is to increasing the accuracy of CFR. In conclusion, this study provides a new perspective in understanding the distribution of FSTT and the construction of a new densely calculated FSTT database for craniofacial reconstruction.

3D craniofacial registration using thin-plate spline transform and cylindrical surface projection

Craniofacial registration is used to establish the point-to-point correspondence in a unified coordinate system among human craniofacial models. It is the foundation of craniofacial reconstruction and other craniofacial statistical analysis research. In this paper, a non-rigid 3D craniofacial registration method using thin-plate spline transform and cylindrical surface projection is proposed. First, the gradient descent optimization is utilized to improve a cylindrical surface fitting (CSF) for the reference craniofacial model. Second, the thin-plate spline transform (TPST) is applied to deform a target craniofacial model to the reference model. Finally, the cylindrical surface projection (CSP) is used to derive the point correspondence between the reference and deformed target models. To accelerate the procedure, the iterative closest point ICP algorithm is used to obtain a rough correspondence, which can provide a possible intersection area of the CSP. Finally, the inverse TPST is used to map the obtained corresponding points from the deformed target craniofacial model to the original model, and it can be realized directly by the correspondence between the original target model and the deformed target model. Three types of registration, namely, reflexive, involutive and transitive registration, are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed craniofacial registration algorithm. Comparison with the methods in the literature shows that the proposed method is more accurate.