Facial soft tissue thickness for a thai population using needle puncture technique application for forensic facial reconstruction

Abstract

Objective: Facial soft tissue thickness (FSTT) is basic information, potentially useful for estimating the unique face in forensic facial reconstruction. Although the FSTT studies were established for different ethnic groups over centuries, a limited num-ber of studies deal with the FSTT for a Thai population. Therefore, the study aimed to study FSTT in a Thai population and to provide the dataset of a Thai adult for forensic facial reconstruction. Materials and Methods: The FSTT was carried out on one hundred fresh cadavers (50 males and 50 females, ages between 51-95 years) at 27 landmarks (10 midline and 17 lateral landmarks) by using needle puncture technique. Results: Significant differences between sexes were found at the orbital, oral, mandibular region, respectively. When compared to previous needle puncture studies, our collected average FSTT values for a Thai population had less than other popula-tions in overall landmarks, for both sexes. Conclusions: Our current results and existing literature suggested that the FSTT for the sex-and population-specific data-bases could be updated as well as improvement of the standardization guidelines measurements. Therefore, the average value of the FSTT of males and females obtained in our study can be useful for forensic facial reconstruction in Thailand.