Investigation of the critical geometric characteristics of living human skulls utilising medical image analysis techniques

Abstract

A non-invasive method has been developed to study and analyse the critical geometric characteristics of living human skulls based on CT scan images. The CT scan images were obtained from patients who were admitted to the hospital and needed a head CT scan diagnosis. The A-P length and breadth of the whole skull, the thickness of the frontal, parietal and occipital bones of 3000 living skulls were analysed in this study. The results have shown that the average thicknesses of the frontal, parietal and occipital bones were (in mm) 6.58, 5.37 and 7.56, respectively, for the male; and 7.48, 5.58 and 8.17, respectively, for the female. The A-P length and breadth of the skull were 175.81 and 145.35, respectively, for the male and 170.61 and 140.11, respectively, for the female. The thickness and the breadth of the human skull are not normally distributed; and in general, females have thicker skulls than males; but males have wider breadth and longer A-P length than females.