Laplacian deformation with symmetry constraints for reconstruction of defective skulls

Abstract

Skull reconstruction is an important and challenging task in craniofacial surgery planning, forensic investigation and anthropological studies. Our previous method called FAIS (Flip-Avoiding Interpolating Surface) [17] is reported to produce more accurate reconstruction of skulls compared to several existing methods. FAIS iteratively applies Laplacian deformation to non-rigidly register a reference to fit the target. Both FAIS and Laplacian deformation have one major drawback. They can produce distorted results when they are applied on skulls with large amounts of defective parts. This paper introduces symmetric constraints to the original Laplacian deformation and FAIS. Comprehensive test results show that the Laplacian deformation and FAIS with symmetric constraints are more robust and accurate than their original counterparts in reconstructing defective skulls with large amounts of defects.