Dental X-rays in a museum?
Without a dentist?
BBC news is reporting that visitors to London’s Science Museum are being invited to have their faces scanned in 3D.
The museum project hopes to scan as many faces as possible as several universities, hospitals and the Eastman Dental Hospital will be utilizing the data collected to provide improved treatment for patients with facial disfigurements and congenital conditions.
Dr Chris Abela, a senior craniofacial fellow at Great Ormond Street Hospital told BBC News, “It’s a very simple process using simultaneous photography by nine cameras and then some software modification to produce a 3D image. Any visitor to the stand will be able to spin their image around, look at themselves from behind their ear or from the worm’s eye view as we call it and really see themselves in another dimension. We know a lot about the bones in our faces but little is known about what makes our face the shape it is and about the skin and muscles that make up our face.”
The plan is to create the largest database internationally of face shapes collected to date. It seems that London is believed to be the perfect place to capture the wide diversity in facial features from around the world.
To see a visitor using the 3D image software at the museum, watch the video below —
The “Me in 3D” face scanning project will be at the London Science Museum until April 10, 2012.
For more on this story see: London’s Science Museum to scan visitors’ faces in 3D
