Patent ID: 7227981

Claim:
A method for restoring a three-dimensional image representing the surface contours of at least one object, based on at least one two-dimensional X-ray projection of this object, the method comprising the steps of: determining the position of the shooting source in a reference referential system; selecting at least one statistical model defining an average shape of the object and its main deformations with respect to this average shape, the statistical model being calculated from an object population of a same type for which the statistical correspondence common to all objects is searched; and selecting an orientation and a position of the model in the reference referential system by submitting the statistical model, successively, to a rigid transformation modifying its position and/or its orientation, then selecting a deformation of the model to modify its contours in three dimensions, by submitting the statistical model to a non-rigid deformation modifying its surface contours, wherein the orientation and deformation selecting steps are performed iteratively, until the contours of the model are such that the intervals between back-projection rays of the image contours in two dimensions from the source and the model surface are minimum, in order to obtain a correspondence between the model and the image.