Body weight gain as related to craniofacial and calvarial volumetric changes in growing rabbits

This investigation was conducted to evaluate the relationship between calvarial and craniofacial volumetric growth relative to body weight gain. Ten male New Zealand white rabbits received spherical tantalum bone markers in the nasal, frontal, parietal, and temporal bones: a minimum of two in each bone segment. The animals were followed from age 32 to 144 days using a roentgen stereophotogrammetric system and an accurate scale. Implant stability was checked at each stereometric examination. Sutural growth and volumetric changes were computed and correlated to weight increase. Successive calvarial and craniofacial polyhedron expansion, as well as weight, showed considerable variability and interindividual variation throughout the observation period. Calculated coefficients of determination, linear regressions, and the correlation coefficients for each age interval demonstrated weak correlations, especially for calvarial to weight data. Consequently, this study suggests a low dependence of calvarial volumetric growth, reflecting the neural mass expansion on body weight development. Thereby, further indications of the low reliability of weight as a parameter of general health evaluation was provided.