Extraneous parts of each face scan will be removed using [MeshLab][1] (Visual Computing Lab ISTI-CNR) and [Blender][2] (Blender Foundation).
Faces will be delineated in MorphAnalyser 2.4 (Tiddeman, Duffy, & Rabey, 2000). In a first step, a template with 54 landmarks will be used (see [Landmark Template][3]). An inter- and intra-rater reliability analysis will determine whether any of the points should be removed or if their definition needs to be clarified.
MorphAnalyser will then be used to align the landmark templates for all digitized faces in orientation, rotation and scale using Procrustes superimposition. MorphAnalyser resamples each faces model in accordance with a standard face delineated with the same set of landmarks (Holzleitner et al., 2014, Holzleitner & Perrett, 2015). This process establishes homology of each face scan's tesselations across the entire sample and allows to carry out procedures such as averaging on the whole surface of each face model (instead of being confined to landmark templates).
### References
Holzleitner, I.J., Hunter, D.W., Tiddeman, B.P., Seck, A., Re, D.E., & Perrett, D.I. (2014). Men's facial masculinity: when body size matters. Perception, 43,1191-1202. doi:10.1068/p7673
Holzleitner, I.J. & Perrett, D.I. (2015). Perception of strength from 3D faces is linked to facial cues of physique. Evolution and Human Behavior, 37(3), 217-229. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.11.004
Tiddeman, B.P., Duffy, N., & Rabey, G. (2000). Construction and visualisation of three-dimensional facial statistics. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 63, 9–20.
[1]: http://meshlab.sourceforge.net "MeshLab"
[2]: http://www.blender.org
[3]: http://osf.io/zsfgr/