Densely calculated facial soft tissue thickness for craniofacial reconstruction in Chinese adults

Abstract Craniofacial reconstruction (CFR) is used to recreate a likeness of original facial appearance for an unidentified skull; this technique has been applied in both forensics and archeology. Many CFR techniques rely on the average facial soft tissue thickness (FSTT) of anatomical landmarks, related to ethnicity, age, sex, body mass index (BMI), etc. Previous studies typically employed FSTT at sparsely distributed anatomical landmarks, where different landmark definitions may affect the contrasting results. In the present study, a total of 90,198 one-to-one correspondence skull vertices are established on 171 head CT-scans and the FSTT of each corresponding vertex is calculated (hereafter referred to as densely calculated FSTT) for statistical analysis and CFR. Basic descriptive statistics (i.e., mean and standard deviation) for densely calculated FSTT are reported separately according to sex and age. Results show that 76.12% of overall vertices indicate that the FSTT is greater in males than females, with the exception of vertices around the zygoma, zygomatic arch and mid-lateral orbit. These sex-related significant differences are found at 55.12% of all vertices and the statistically age-related significant differences are depicted between the three age groups at a majority of all vertices (73.31% for males and 63.43% for females). Five non-overlapping categories are given and the descriptive statistics (i.e., mean, standard deviation, local standard deviation and percentage) are reported. Multiple appearances are produced using the densely calculated FSTT of various age and sex groups, and a quantitative assessment is provided to examine how relevant the choice of FSTT is to increasing the accuracy of CFR. In conclusion, this study provides a new perspective in understanding the distribution of FSTT and the construction of a new densely calculated FSTT database for craniofacial reconstruction.