Method for establishing a deformable 3D model of an element, and associated system

A method for generating a three-dimensional morphable model of a selected element, the method comprising:

• obtaining a plurality of training point clouds for the selected element, each training point cloud comprising a plurality of points representing an example of the selected element;
• for each training point cloud:
• calculating, from a meshed surface defined by the point cloud, one or more values of a geometric characteristic of the meshed surface as measured at a corresponding one or more points of the point cloud;
• and
• generating a two-dimensional representation of the meshed surface and the one or more calculated values;
• for a reference training point cloud selected from the plurality of training point clouds, registering a set of reference peaks, where the set of reference peaks is a subset of the plurality of points comprising the reference training point cloud;
• based on the registered set of reference peaks, down-sampling each non-reference training point cloud of the plurality of training point clouds;
• calculating a model of the selected element from the down-sampled training point clouds, the model of the selected element comprising an average shape of the selected element and one or more deformation modes;
• and
• re-meshing the average shape of the selected element.