Facial soft tissue depths in French adults: variability, specificity and estimation

Facial soft tissue depths (FSTD) are used in facial approximation to render the shape of the face, and are traditionally published specifically to population, corpulence, and sex amongst other factors. This paper investigates the variability of FSTD collected at 37 landmarks on 500 CT (computed tomography) scans of French living individuals. The specificity of the sample is evaluated by comparing values with six published datasets of various populations and recording techniques. Apart from a significant influence of the corpulence, FSTD show negligible variations with age and sex. The differences between the French sample and other datasets contradict the hypothesis of major influence of population, and underline sample specificity linked with technique and methodology of data measurement. Regression equations were computed to estimate FSTD using age, sex, facial build, and craniometrics, leading to more accurate results if such factors are known. Nevertheless, application of the pooled T-table (Tallied-Facial-Soft-Tissue-Depth-Data) has been validated according to the French sample.