Creating Three-Dimensional Templates of Smiling and Pouting Faces for Different Sex- and Age Groups

Smile appearance has a major psychological impact. Orthognathic surgery, which has harmonizing results on skeletal structures, can negatively influence the smile appearance due to soft tissue effects. To enhance the aesthetic effects of orthognathic surgery on soft tissues, reference models for large parts of the hospital’s adherent area are called for. This study aims to create average facial models for different sex and age groups in two facial exercises: maximum closed smile, and pouting. These models were created using coherent point drift and Procrustes algorithms in MATLAB. Principal component analysis was performed, and of 20 surgical landmarks, the in-group variation using standard deviation was calculated. Three distances were analyzed: nasal width, philtral width, and mouth width. To correct for facial size, these distances were analyzed as a ratio of intercanthal width. In total, 328 healthy subjects were included in the study. Subjects were grouped by sex, and in age categories spanning four years each, with an adult group with all ages >16 years. For both smiling and pouting faces, all ratios increased with ageing. These templates and data can benefit facial surgeons, to obtain an expected outcome according to the age of the patient.