Evaluation of facial reconstructive surgery on patients with facial palsy using optical strain

Abstract

We explore marker-less tracking methods for the purpose of evaluating the efficacy of facial re-constructive surgery on patients with facial palsies. After experimenting with several optical flow methods, we choose an approach that results in less than 2 pixels in tracking error for 15 markers tracked on the face. A novel method is presented that utilizes the non-rigid deformation observed on facial skin tissue to visualize the severity of facial paralysis. Results are given on a dataset that contains three videos of an individual recorded using a standard definition camera both before and after undergoing facial reconstructive surgery over a period of three years. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.