Looking at comparable studies illuminates what is distinctive about the Zlatý kůň comparison.

Earlier comparative studies have typically focused on two methods — usually a forensic method versus an artistic one, or two variants of the same basic approach.

The three-way comparison in the 2026 study, encompassing two manual methods from quite different traditions (forensic and artistic) and one fully automated computational method, is more comprehensive than most previous work.

Studies that have compared reconstruction results to ground-truth photographs (in forensic contexts) have found that different methods tend to perform differently on different facial features.

The overall facial shape — the proportions and general organization of the face — tends to be reasonably well captured by most methods.