title: Computer vision and soft computing for automatic skull-face overlay in craniofacial superimposition.
abstract: Craniofacial superimposition can provide evidence to support that some human skeletal remains belong or not to a missing person. It involves the process of overlaying a skull with a number of ante mortem images of an individual and the analysis of their morphological correspondence. Within the craniofacial superimposition process, the skull-face overlay stage just focuses on achieving the best possible overlay of the skull and a single ante mortem image of the suspect. Although craniofacial superimposition has been in use for over a century, skull-face overlay is still applied by means of a trial-and-error approach without an automatic method. Practitioners finish the process once they consider that a good enough overlay has been attained. Hence, skull-face overlay is a very challenging, subjective, error prone, and time consuming part of the whole process. Though the numerical assessment of the method quality has not been achieved yet, computer vision and soft computing arise as powerful tools to automate it, dramatically reducing the time taken by the expert and obtaining an unbiased overlay result. In this manuscript, we justify and analyze the use of these techniques to properly model the skull-face overlay problem. We also present the automatic technical procedure we have developed using these computational methods and show the four overlays obtained in two craniofacial superimposition cases. This automatic procedure can be thus considered as a tool to aid forensic anthropologists to develop the skull-face overlay, automating and avoiding subjectivity of the most tedious task within craniofacial superimposition.
authors.affiliation: European Centre for Soft Computing, 33600 Mieres, Asturias, Spain.
authors.forename: B Rosario
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Campomanes-Álvarez
authors.affiliation: European Centre for Soft Computing, 33600 Mieres, Asturias, Spain.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Ibáñez
authors.affiliation: Physical Anthropology Laboratory, University of Granada, 18012 Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Navarro
authors.affiliation: Physical Anthropology Laboratory, University of Granada, 18012 Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Alemán
authors.affiliation: Physical Anthropology Laboratory, University of Granada, 18012 Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Botella
authors.affiliation: European Centre for Soft Computing, 33600 Mieres, Asturias, Spain. Electronic address: sergio.damas@softcomputing.es.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Damas
authors.affiliation: European Centre for Soft Computing, 33600 Mieres, Asturias, Spain; Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Granada, 18014 Granada, Spain; Research Center on Information and Communication Technologies (CITIC-UGR), University of Granada, 18014 Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Cordón
mesh_terms: D059925:Anatomic Landmarks; D005145:Face / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D018732:Forensic Anthropology / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D010781:Photography; D012886:Skull / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D012984:Software
keywords: Computer vision; Craniofacial superimposition; Forensic anthropology; Fuzzy landmarks; Skull–face overlay; Soft computing