Computer Assisted 3 D Craniofacial Reconstruction

This thesis describes a methodology for forensic craniofacial reconstruction, de ned as the reproduction a subject's facial appearance from the skull and mandible for the purposes of identi cation. The focus of this work is on reproducing three dimensional facial shape from the shape of the skull and mandible of a subject. This task can be broken into two parts. First, a technique for determining soft tissue depth at any point on the skull and mandible surface is presented. Second, two complementary methods of producing three dimensional facial shape are presented: a method which generates a surface using the skull and mandible as a skeleton of an implicit surface and a method which produces a hierarchical B-spline surface t to facial surface locations. Surface material properties and facial features can then be added and modi ed to these models before being rendered and distributed. Results of these processes are presented.