Construction and use of facial archetypes in anthropology and syndrome diagnosis.
This paper describes the benefits of moving from recording simple Euclidian distances and angles between landmarks on the face to full three-dimensional visualisation and mapping using modern optical scanning techniques. Pilot experiments are reported on that strive to create facial archetypes which are accurately descriptive of various cohorts of people. Issues considered include variation amongst people of the same sex, age and population-of-origin. The study has discovered that very few people are needed to construct an "average" face, which is measurably indistinguishable from another average constructed using the faces of other people from within the group studied. This discovery has given the researchers confidence in the reliability of the archetypes which they have produced and this is important if such an analytical technique is to find application in discriminating between peoples on a population basis and in syndrome diagnosis.
School of Dental Science, Faculty of Medicine Dentistry and Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne, 720 Swanston Street, Vic. 3010, Australia.
A I M
AI
Shaweesh
J G
JG
Clement
C D L
CD
Thomas
A
A
Bankier
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D019465:Craniofacial Abnormalities / Q000473:pathology*; D005006:Ethnicity; D005060:Europe; D005145:Face / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D005260:Female; D018732:Forensic Anthropology / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007564:Japan; D007723:Korea; D008297:Male; D013577:Syndrome