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Comparison Between Interactive Closest Point and Procrustes Analysis for Determining the Median Sagittal Plane of
Yuxue Xiong1, Yijiao Zhao, Huifang Yang
1*Center of Digital Dentistry †Faculty of Prosthodontics, Peking University School and Hospital of Stomatology ‡National Engineering Laboratory for Digital and Material Technology of Stomatology §Research Center of Engineering and Technology for Digital Dentistry, Ministry of Health, Beijing, China.
Objective:
To compare 2 digital methods to determine median sagittal plane of three-dimensional facial data-the interactive closest point algorithm and Procrustes analysis.
Methods:
The three-dimensional facial data of the 30 volunteers were got by the Face Scan 3D optical sensor (3D-Shape GmbH, Erlangen, Germany), and then were input to the reverse engineering software Imageware 13.0 (Siemens, Plano, TX) and Geomagic 2012 (Cary, NC). Their mirrored data were acquired and superimposed with the original data by the methods of interactive closest points and Procrustes analysis. The median sagittal planes of the 2 methods were extracted from the original and mirrored facial data respectively, 3 asymmetry indices were measured for comparison. Differences between the facial asymmetry indices of the 2 methods were evaluated using the paired sample t-test.
Results:
In terms of the 3 asymmetry indices, there were no significant differences between interactive closest points and Procrustes analysis for extracting median sagittal plane from three-dimensional facial data.(t = 0.0.060, P = 0.953 for asymmetry index (AI) 1, t = -0.926, P = 0.362 for AI 2, t = 1.1172, P = 0.0.251 for AI 3).
Conclusions:
In this evaluation of 30 subjects, the Procrustes analysis and the interactive closest point median-sagittal planes were similar in terms of the 3 asymmetry indices. Thus, Procrustes analysis and interactive closest point can both be used to abstract median sagittal plane from three-dimensional facial data.

