[Three-dimensional cephalometry: applications in clinical practice and research]

A 3D cephalometric analysis method from scanner acquisition has been developed thanks to a long collaboration between Dr Treil and the Department of Orthodontics in Toulouse III University. It allows a perfect knowledge of maxillo-facial architecture using fourteen landmarks related to the neuromatricial axis of facial growth. These landmarks can be identified without ambiguity. The marking of each tooth relative to dental arches (gravity centre coordinates and torque and tipping of each tooth), and the location of arches relative to maxillo-facial frame are given by the analysis. Description and reconstruction of dental and maxillo-facial anatomy are possible with three levels: maxillo-facial frame, maxillar and mandibular bases and dentoalveolar level. The method not only gives more precise information than conventional cephalometrics in anteroposterior and vertical directions, but it allows transversal analysis and asymmetry measurement. Applications are numerous in research as well as in clinical medicine: analyses of cases border line surgery, surgical set-up, facial asymmetry, analysis of dentoalveolar compensations, definition of therapeutic aims, occlusal analysis and set-up, study of evolution in anthropology-primatology, study of growth etc. This method of description using a pattern of landmarks is perfectly adapted to the last developments of modern research techniques: morphometric geometry with Procustes superimpositions, EDMA, TPS, FEM.