title: A regional method for craniofacial reconstruction based on coordinate adjustments and a new fusion strategy.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: College of Information Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China; Engineering Research Center of Virtual Reality and Applications, Ministry of Education (MOE), Beijing, China. Electronic address: qqdeng@bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Qingqiong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.affiliation: College of Information Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China; Beijing Key Laboratory of Digital Preservation and Virtual Reality for Cultural Heritage, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Mingquan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: College of Information Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Zhongke
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: College of Information Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China; Beijing Key Laboratory of Digital Preservation and Virtual Reality for Cultural Heritage, Beijing, China. Electronic address: shuiwuyang@bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Wuyang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Shui
authors.affiliation: Institute of Forensic Science Ministry of Public Security, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ji
authors.affiliation: College of Information Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China; Engineering Research Center of Virtual Reality and Applications, Ministry of Education (MOE), Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Xingce
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Face Lab & School of Computer Science, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Ching Yiu Jessica
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: College of Information Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Youliang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: College of Information Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Haiyan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005145:Face; D005147:Facial Bones / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D005260:Female; D018732:Forensic Anthropology / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008954:Models, Biological; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012886:Skull / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Coordinate adjustment; Craniofacial reconstruction; Forensic identification; Fusion; PLSR; Region