A new two dimensional facial contour tracing method

Abstract EN

Background: Having an accurate, reproducible, clinically applicable, and ethical quantitative method for tracing facial contour is an asset in studying the effects of various surgical approaches or drag regimes, on postoperative and infectious swellings in oral surgery.

The aim of this study is to develop and test a method and an apparatus that can be used in clinical trials to trace and measure the facial contour in a coronal section in the face.

Materials and Methods : Our method relies on posing the head in a cephaldstat in a well standardized reproducible way and using a narrow beam from a laser diode to trace selected evenly spaced points on the contour of a selected coronal section in the face and project them as illuminated points on a graph paper, the illuminated points can be Joined by a line to produce a graph which represents the traced contour, retracing contour graphs made in successive sessions can be used to assess objectively progression of facial swellings.

The method and the tracing apparatus were tested on four carefully selected swelling-free subjects to determine the method's inherent as well as posing error.

Results : Results showed that the method's inherent error was so small that can be neglected (0.2%), head posing error of the method was only 0.56%.

Conclusions : Our method is relatively accurate, ethical, and clinically applicable, it can be used to trace contour of facial swellings in the course of their progression under the influence of various surgical approaches or drug regimes.