Masters Degrees (Anatomy and Histology)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/3551

Browse

Browsing Masters Degrees (Anatomy and Histology) by Author "Daniels, Luke-John"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Defining a method to predict mouth morphology in edentulous skulls
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-04) Daniels, Luke-John; Alblas, Amanda; Smith, Kathryn; Roberts, Tina; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dept. of Biomedical Sciences: Anatomy and Histology.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Forensic facial depiction (FFD) is the process whereby a face is modelled to depict a face from an unknown deceased individual’s skull to assist with human identification. The field of FFD that has not been researched extensively, is the edentulous mouth, where edentulism refers to the condition of not having teeth. Therefore, this study attempted to establish whether a method could be produced to predict edentulous mouth morphology for FFD practice. To achieve this, Pearson’s correlation analysis was used and the relationship between the individual’s soft tissue measurements (somatometry) and skull measurements (osteometry) were analysed. Dentate patients, those with teeth, were also included in the study to understand the morphometric difference between the mouths of dentate and edentulous patients. Cone Beam Computer Tomography (CBCT) scans of n=63 patients were retrieved. This included 40 dentate patients (n=24 males and n=16 females) and 23 edentulous patients (n=7 males and n=16 females). The patients’ CBCT scans were retrieved from the Oral Health Centre of the University of the Western Cape’s Picture Archiving and Communication System. The morphometrics software, Stratovan CheckpointTM, was used to perform osteometry and somatometry on these scans. The somatometry of all patients included measuring soft tissue thicknesses (STTs) of the upper mouth as well as the patients’ lip height (LH) and philtrum length (PL). For the edentulous patients, the STTs included the mid-philtrum (H), and mid- upper lip margin (I). For the dentate patients, the STTs measured were the H, I, the upper incisor (II) and lateral supra-labiale (F). For osteometry, all patients’ skulls were measured to retrieve the following skull lengths: the bizygomatic breadth, basion-prosthion length, basion- gnathion length, maxillo-alveolar breadth, maxillo-alveolar length, nasion-prosthion, and the cranial base length. These lengths were then used to calculate the maxilla-alveolar (MAI), upper facial, subnasal gnathic (SGI), and gnathic indices. A Shapiro-Wilk test was performed, and it was found that all osteometry and somatometry were normally distributed. Therefore, the correlation analysis could be applied. For the edentulous patients, the correlation analysis was only applied to the female patients since the male group was below the suggested sample size for correlation analysis (n<10). The results found that no significant correlations exist between female edentulous mouth somatometry and osteometry. For the dentate males, significant correlations were identified in: the MAI, and II- right and II-left; GI and H; and SGI and LH. For the dentate females: SGI, and II-left, F-left, and LH. Based on this study, it cannot be concluded that osteometry is a good predictor of edentulous mouth morphology. Other factors may play a role in the results of this research such as the sample size and certain edentulous anomalies, for example, residual ridge resorption (RRR). In the dentate group, significant correlations were found since RRR did not affect these patients. Therefore, for future studies, it is suggested that a larger sample is retrieved that is strictly controlled for edentulous anomalies.