GreatBear, JD-EE,
I like both of your approaches !
It might be worthwhile to do both. And then compare the results.
Going only for GreatBear's approach is very interesting all by itself even just to see if it is doable at all, yet it will be difficult to evaluate the result.
In order to draw a conclusion about the suitability finally you will need a way of validation.
And that could be exactly the opposite aaproach which is based on pro's and con's.