Facial soft tissue thickness trends for selected age groups of Sri Lankan adult population

Facial soft tissue thickness (FSTT), together with the osteological characteristics of the skull, is one of the important factors for facial reconstruction in both forensic anthropology and plastic surgeries. Even though a number of countries around the world have analysed the FSTT data of their own populations and are having a FSTT database, no such dataset or analysis is available in Sri Lanka. In this study, FSTT was measured at 23 standard anthropological landmarks using magnetic resonance images (MRIs) of 243 adult individuals (male - 121, female - 122) of the Sri Lankan population, which were collected from clinical data from the National Hospital of Sri Lanka. For each landmark, basic descriptive statistics were calculated. The FSTT values which were classified according to the gender and age, were analysed to assess the variation of FSTT with those categories. The results of this study indicate that there are certain FSTT attributes which are related to specific landmarks and age groups. For example, data in this study depict that men have higher FSTT than women, in the area along the midline. However, the area around the cheeks shows comparatively large tissue thickness in young women (within 20-39 age range) than in men. Some landmarks indicate a significant variation in values with aging. Finally the results of this study were compared with that of a North West Indian study to evaluate whether a significant difference is present among the two geographically close countries.