Enit/Electrical/Image Processing

The purpose of this study is to present a method of three-dimensional computed tomographic (3D-CT) cephalometrics and its use to study cranio/maxilla-facial malformations. We propose a system for automatic localization of cephalometric landmarks using reeb graphs. Volumetric images of a patient were reconstructed into 3D mesh. The proposed method is carried out in three steps: we begin by applying 3d mesh skull simplification, this mesh was reconstructed from a head volumetric medical image, and then we extract a reeb graph. Reeb graph mesh extraction represents a skeleton composed in a number of nodes and arcs. We are interested in the node position; we noted that some reeb nodes could be considered as cephalometric landmarks under specific conditions. The third step is to identify these nodes automatically by using elastic mesh registration using “thin plate ” transformation and clustering. Preliminary results show a landmarks recognition rate of more than 90%, very close to the manually provided landmarks positions made by a medical stuff