Three-dimensional craniofacial reconstruction with electronic optical contouring

The authors present an electronic optical contouring method and its biomedical application to three-dimensional quantitation of the craniofacial surface. These optical but noninterferometric contours, representing depth of a surface, are generated by projection optics, which utilize incoherent light and are thus relatively inexpensive. With the aid of digital image processing techniques, the process of contour mapping is automated for improved speed and accuracy. Preliminary experiments on a volunteer demonstrate the capability for accurate three-dimensional real-time cephalometry