A real-coded evolutionary algorithm-based registration approach for forensic identification using the radiographic comparison of frontal sinuses

Comparative radiography is the forensic anthropology technique in which ante-mortem (AM) and post-mortem (PM) radiographic materials (e.g., X-ray images or CTs) are compared in order to determine the identity of a deceased human being. One of the most commonly used anatomical structures in comparative radiography are the frontal sinuses. The frontal sinuses are osseous cavities located in the skull, which are used in forensic identification tasks due to their singularity and high identification power. In order to automate the comparison of frontal sinuses in AM and PM materials, it is necessary to perform the registration of these materials (i.e., it is necessary to carry out the alignment of these anatomical regions). However, the manual alignment of these structures is a time-consuming and subjective process. In order to tackle this problem, this paper presents an automatic frontal sinuses registration method in comparative radiography using real-coded evolutionary algorithms (RCEAs). The task is formulated as a 2D-3D image registration problem using a 9 Degrees of Freedom perspective transformation model; two RCEAs (DE and MVMOSH) are compared in the minimization of the registration cost function, and the best of them (MVMO-SH) is applied to an identification scenario including 50X-ray images and 50 CTs. The results obtained show that the proposed automatic identification system is able to filter more than 80% of the sample.