Assessing the contribution of orthodontic profiles in predicting facial soft tissue thickness for forensic facial approximation.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Facial soft tissue thickness (FSTT) is essential for forensic facial approximation. Although its correlations with age, sex, and body mass index (BMI) are well documented, the potential correlations between FSTT and various orthodontic profiles-such as cephalic index (CI), skeletal class (SC), Tweed and Northwestern analyses-remain unexplored collectively. This study examined these correlations and their impact on FSTT prediction accuracy.

Methods

We analyzed 103 postmortem computed tomography datasets from Japanese cadavers aged 18-86 years. Moderate-to-high multicollinearity was identified among orthodontic profile variables (SC, Tweed, and Northwestern) and addressed using principal component analysis (PCA), yielding two principal components (PC1 and PC2). Pred

SUBMITTER: Hanafi MGS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12532767 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature