Virtual craniofacial reconstruction using computer vision, graph theory and geometric constraints

A novel solution to the problem of virtual craniofacial reconstruction using computer vision, graph theory and geometric constraints is proposed. Virtual craniofacial reconstruction is modeled along the lines of the well-known problem of rigid surface registration. The Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm is first employed with the closest set computation performed using the Maximum Cardinality Minimum Weight (MCMW) bipartite graph matching algorithm. Next, the bounding boxes of the fracture surfaces, treated as cycle graphs, are employed to generate multiple candidate solutions based on the concept of graph automorphism. The best candidate solution is selected by exploiting local and global geometric constraints. Finally, the initialization of the ICP algorithm with the best candidate solution is shown to improve surface reconstruction accuracy and speed of convergence. Experimental results on Computed Tomography (CT) scans of real patients are presented.