1. A computerized method for mapping a digitized target image of a face to a wireframe topology stored in a memory in a computer system, where the image is composed of a plurality of pixels arranged in a regular pattern, and the wireframe topology is composed of a plurality of nodes connected by lines, comprising the steps of: detecting a plurality of facial features contained in both the image and wireframe topology; computing a bounding box from said plurality of detected facial features; cropping a reference facial image using the bounding box, wherein the reference facial image is a composite image of a plurality of facial images; cropping the digitized target facial image using the bounding box; registering the cropped reference facial image with the cropped target facial image to determine a displacement field using a spline-based image registration; and applying the displacement field to a reference wireframe topology to map the target facial image to the wireframe topology.