Computerized assembly of neurocranial fragments based on surface extrapolation

Fossil crania are often fractured and fragmented due to compaction and diagenesis. To restore the antemortem appearance of a fossil cranium, it is necessary to correctly assemble the fragments into their original anatomical positions. In this study, we propose a concept for computerized reconstruction that employs surface extrapolation to aid the assembly of fossil neurocranial fragments. Specifically, we approximate the surface of each neurocranial fragment using a bicubic Bezier surface to extrapolate the surface and mathematically predict the shape of adjacent fragments. The positions and orientations of adjacent fragments were calculated by minimizing the fitting errors. To evaluate the usefulness of this concept, we virtually divided modern human and chimpanzee neurocrania into pieces and used the proposed method to reassemble the generated virtual fragments. The neurocranial fragments were smoothly and correctly assembled. Comparison of the results obtained using the proposed method and conventional manual assembly revealed that the proposed method delivered similar performance in terms of differences between the original and reassembled shapes. However, the accuracy of the reassembly was found to be worse in the chimpanzee case because the fragments were more curved than those for the human cranium. Although there are some methodological limitations, the proposed concept may be useful for development of digital reassembly of fossil neurocranial fragments.