Craniofacial Superimposition in Forensic Identification using Genetic Algorithms

Craniofacial superimposition is a process that aims to identify a person by overlaying a photograph and a model of the skull. This process is usually carried out manually by forensic anthropologists; thus being very time consuming and presenting several difficulties in finding a good fit between the 3D model of the skull and the 2D photo of the face. In this paper we present a fast and automatic procedure to tackle the superimposition problem. The proposed method is based on real-coded genetic algorithms. Synthetic data are used to validate the method. Results on a real case from our Physical Anthropology lab of the University of Granada are also presented.