The virtual cranio-facial patient project Le projet de patient virtuel dans le domaine cranio-facial

One of the research goals at the Craniofacial Virtual Reality Laboratory and the Integrated Media Systems Center at the University of Southern California is to build a virtual craniofacial patient from CT data, digital teeth models, and human jaw motion tracking. First, two different techniques to acquire three-dimensional soft-tissue representations will be presented. Then, automatic segmentation of the upper and lower jaws will be introduced, followed by three-dimensional reconstruction of these structures. Preliminary results on integrating high-quality digital teeth models with CT reconstructed models will be shown. Finally, an integration of the three-dimensional CT data and an ultrasound motion tracking device for human jaw, allows for visualization of jaw movement in three dimensions.