Can Computer Vision Techniques be Applied to Automated Forensic Examinations? A Study on Sex Identification from Human Skulls Using Head CT Scans

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• 刊名：Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：10114
• 期：1
• 页码：342-359
• 丛书名：Computer Vision ? ACCV 2016
• ISBN：978-3-319-54190-7
• 卷排序：10114

文摘

Sex determination from human skeletal remains is a challenging problem in forensic anthropology. The human skull has been regarded as the second best predictor of sex because it contains several sexually dimorphic traits. Previous studies have shown that morphological assessment and morphometric analysis can be used to assess sex variation from dried skulls. With the availability of CT scanners, the field has seen increasing computer aided techniques in assisting these traditional forensic examinations. However, they largely remain at the level of providing a digital interface for landmarking for morphometric analysis. A recent research has applied shape analysis techniques for morphological analysis on a specific part of the skull. In this paper, we endeavor to explore the application of computer vision techniques that have prominently been used in the field of 3D object recognition and retrieval, for providing alternative method to achieve sex identification from human skulls automatically. We suggest a possible framework for the whole process including multi-region representation of the skull with 3D shape descriptors, and particularly examined the role of 3D descriptors on sex identification accuracy. The experimental results on 100 head post mortem CT scans indicate the potential of 3D descriptors for skull sex classification. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to have approached skull sex prediction from this novel perspective.