Facial Asymmetry Analysis Based on 3-D Dynamic Scans

Facial asymmetry is an important characteristic used in a number of applications. It plays a vital role in human perception of attractiveness and as such has been used in psychology including research on facial expressions evaluation as well as in plastic surgery and orthodontics. It has been also recognized as a biometric feature used for identification and has important applications in detection and quantification of medical disorders, including neurological conditions, such as stroke or Bell's palsy. The current methods for assessing facial asymmetry mainly rely on manual semi-automatic procedures which have significant limitations as they are subjective in nature. This paper presents a computer-based methodology of automatic facial asymmetry analysis which has been used for detection and quantification of facial dysfunctions. The method is based on dynamic 3-D scans of human faces. Using facial sequences from the Hi4D-ADSIP database, the preliminary evaluation results suggest that the proposed method is able to assist in quantification and diagnosis of facial dysfunctions for neurological patients.