Brazilian scientists have been using digital technology on the skulls of saints, so as to reconstruct their faces. They used their technique on a relatively well-attested relic of Mary Magdalene. This is what she may have looked like.
Image by Cicero Moraes (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
From Scientists bring saints back to life with imaging technology | Religion News Service
Brazilian scientists are using 3-D printing technology to reconstruct the faces of Roman Catholic saints and other holy people, producing life-size busts of what they actually looked like hundreds of years after they died.
This month the scientists will present their latest project: the faces of St. Rosa of Lima, the patron saint of Peru who died in 1617, and Sister Ana of Los Angeles Monteagudo, a Dominican nun from Peru, who died in 1686 and was beatified in 1985. Their reconstructed features will be unveiled in Lima and Arequipa on July 21 and 24, respectively.
Cicero Moraes, a computer graphics designer, and Paulo Miamoto, a forensic dentist and anthropologist, use tomography (or CT scans) as well as a process of photogrammetry, in which hundreds of photographs are taken, to digitally map the preserved skulls, taking spatially accurate images and data from all angles.
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