A combined statistical shape model of the scalp and skull of the human head

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a framework to build a combined statistical shape model (SSM) of the outer surface of the scalp and the inner and outer surface of the skull of the human head. Such an SSM is a valuable tool when designing headgear, as it captures the variability of head geometry of a given population, enabling detailed analysis of the relation between the shape of the scalp and the skull. A combined SSM of the head may allow to work towards population based Finite Element (FE) models e.g. for safety and comfort predictions when wearing headgear. Therefore, a correspondence between the skull and scalp surfaces, originating from MRI scans, is determined using elastic surface registration. The combined SSM shown to be compact, to be able to generalize to unseen instances by adjusting the shape parameters and to be shape specific. Therefore, we can assure that, by adjusting the shape parameters, a broad range of realistic head shapes can be formed.