Canonical correlations between masticatory muscle orientation and dentoskeletal morphology in children

In order to identify associations between the orientation of the superficial masseter and temporalis muscles and dentoskeletal morphology in a sample of fifty-five children with various malocclusions, eight muscle-orientation variables (relative to the occlusal plane) and twenty-three dentoskeletal variables were evaluated from lateral head films. The thirty-one measurements were reduced to six muscle-orientation and sixteen dentoskeletal variables by a principal component analysis. Three canonical correlations were identified between the muscle orientation and dentoskeletal variable groups at the 0.05 level of significance and canonical loadings were determined for each set of variables. The first canonical correlation (r1 = 0.931) represents a growth-related correlation factor between the masticatory muscle insertion positions relative to the occlusal plane and the dimensional and positional changes of craniofacial structures during growth. The second canonical correlation (r2 = 0.846) may account for an operational artifact in the geometric measurement process, and the third canonical correlation (r3 = 0.813) suggests an association between superficial masseter muscle orientation relative to the occlusal plane and mandibular form. This report confirms the usefulness of multivariate statistical methods to extract latent associations between muscle orientation and craniofacial morphology; the results obtained suggest a contribution from the geometric orientation of the masticatory muscles to the development and maintenance of the dentoskeletal system.