Friday 28 June 2013

A skeleton of Medicine's History Museum have his face revealed

Some days ago I was looking for some skull to reconstruct and present in my talk on Blender in Brazil. The talk will happen in the FISL14, one of the greatest free software conference in the world.

Fortunately I received an email from the Medicine's History Museum of Rio Grande do Sul (MUHM), that needed a forensic facial reconstrucion.

The nickname of the skeleton is Joaquim. He was a prisoner that died like a indigent in France in 1920. In 2006 he was donated to the museum by a family of doctors.

I ordered a CT-Scan and the people of the museum sent me not only the head, but all Joaquim's body.

So, I'll reconstruct all the body, but for now only the head was done.

To reconstruct the bones in 3D I used InVesalius, a CT-Scan reader open source. It was necessary export some files with different configurations, because the amount of data is huge.

Like I said, in this first part of Joaquim Project I'll reconstruct only the face. In the Meshlab I cleaned the noise of 3D reconstruction of CT-Scan.

The skull was not complete. To get the mandible I made a projection using Sassouni/Krogman method shown in Karen T. Taylor's book.

With the help of forensic dentist Dr. Paulo Miamoto, we get the range of Joaquim's age: 30-50.

The tissue depth markers was put.

So it was possible to sketch the profile of the face.


 The muscles was glued at the skull.



 Finally, the skin, the cloth and the hair was put.

I don't know if Joaquim really was born in France, but he appear a French man.

Thanks to:
Éverton Quevedo and Letícia Castro from MUHM.

A big hug and I see you in the next!

3 comments:

  1. You are raising the level everyday!!! Congratulations.

    Lots of people don't understand why this kind of projects are important. Why use a CAT machine in dead people, when people alive need them so much, they ask. But those people forget how important this "know how" can be in forensic science or medicine. Many people forget, that one of the first 3D printed skulls was made during the famous Ötzi mummy interdisciplinary research:

    http://www.bolzano.net/exhibitions/oetzi20.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi

    Apparently team anthropologists and archaeologists, asked if was possible to create a physical copy from the 3D CAT scans. At the time, 3D printing was a complex technique, mainly used in aeronautics or the automobile industry. Some claimed the pretension was expensive and unnecessary. But when the medical staff observed the finished 3D skull, they understood perfectly it's utility for planing complex surgeries or creating medical prosthetics.

    All knowledge can be useful knowledge.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice post Cicero!
    Do you think it would be possible to restore all the missing part of the skeleton and share it with an open license? I think it is not so simple to find a complete skeleton in internet and it could be interesting in many research field...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Luca
      Thank you!
      I'll try to talk with the people of the museum.
      A big hug!

      Delete

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