Computer-Aided Facial Soft Tissue Reconstruction with Computer Vision: A Modern Approach to Identifying Unknown Individuals

Facial soft tissue reconstruction is an important tool in forensic investigations, especially when conventional identification methods are unsuccessful. This paper presents a digital workflow for facial reconstruction and identity verification using computer vision techniques applied to two forensic cases. The first case involves a cold case from 1993, in which a manual reconstruction by Prof. Helmer was conducted in 1994. We digitally reconstructed the same individual using CAD software (Blender), enabling a direct comparison between manual and digital techniques. To date, the deceased remains unidentified. The second case, from 2021, involved a digitally reconstructed face that was later matched to a missing person through DNA analysis. Here, comparison material was available, including an official photograph. A police officer involved in the case noted a “striking resemblance” between the reconstruction and the photograph. To evaluate this subjective impression, we performed quantitative analyses using three face recognition models (Dlib-based method, VGG-Face, and GhostFaceNet). The models did not indicate significant similarity, highlighting a gap between human perception and algorithmic assessment. These findings suggest that current face recognition algorithms may not yet be fully suited to evaluating reconstructions, which tend to deviate in subtle but critical facial features. To achieve better facial recognition results, further research is required to generate more anatomically accurate and detailed reconstructions that align more closely with the sensitivity of AI-based identification systems.