Preliminary study of facial soft tissue thickness in Indian children from Mumbai city

Abstract

Facial soft tissue thickness measurement has found its applications not only in fields of clinical and medical studies but also in areas of ergonomics and product design. Various studies have been conducted to generate facial soft tissue profiles for adult population belonging to particular age, gender, ethnic group or location. Still there are hardly many studies focusing on measurement of facial soft tissue thickness for children. In this study, authors have tried to perform a preliminary investigation of facial soft tissue thickness at eighteen landmarks for Indian children from Mumbai. For this study, anatomical 3D head models were created from Computed Tomography (CT) images of the participants to measure soft tissue thickness values at selected landmarks. The results give an insight about facial soft tissue profile of Indian children. It gives an understanding about variance based on gender, location of landmark and tissue symmetry.