Nasofacial morphometric analysis for nasal reconstruction

Abstract

The advances of computer aided design with powerful additive manufacturing techniques have been applied to produce the nasal prostheses. Basically, nasal reconstruction using manual technique was time consuming. The objective of this study is to measure the naso-facial parameters and to model the nasal prostheses from the CT data. The CT data were obtained from the Radiology Department in Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM) Kubang Kerian. Total of 30 normal healthy subjects were included to measure nasal and facial distances. The measurement of the predetermined landmarks on the nose and face were done on the 3D images using medical imaging software. Then, the virtual nose models were segmented from the entire face. Based on the measurements, the mean for the most of parameters were higher in males compared to females. The p values for most of the parameters were also significantly different. The result showed that there was sexual dimorphism in males and females for nasal characteristics. From this study, it can be concluded that this method give more advantages over the conventional methods in terms of prosthesis fabrication time and nose shape accuracy.