FACES: 3D FAcial reConstruction from anciEnt Skulls using content based image retrieval

Powerful techniques for modelling and rendering tridimensional organic shapes, like human body, are today available for applications in many fields such as special effects, ergonomic simulation or medical visualization, just to name a few. These techniques, combined with Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR), are proving to be very useful also to archaeologists and anthropologists committed to reconstruct the aspect of the inhabitants of historically relevant sites like Pompei. This paper presents an integrated system to provide 3D FAcial reConstruction from anciEnt Skulls (FACES). FACES, starting from radiological analysis of an ancient skull and a database of modern individuals of the same area/gender/age, produces a tridimensional facial model compatible to the anthropological and craniometrical features of the original skull. Finally, we compare FACES peculiarities to the most used facial reconstruction methodologies available today. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.