Solazzo Riccardo, Cappella Annalisa, Gibelli Daniele, Dolci Claudia, Tartaglia Gianluca, Sforza Chiarella
Laboratory of Functional Anatomy of the Stomatognathic System (LAFAS), Department of Biomedical Sciences for Health, University of Milan, 20133 Milan, Italy.
U.O. Laboratory of Applied Morphology, IRCCS Policlinico San Donato, 20097 San Donato Milanese, Italy.
Diagnostics (Basel). 2025 Feb 6;15(3):395. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics15030395.
The characterization of facial sexual dimorphic patterns in healthy populations serves as valuable normative data to tailor functionally effective surgical treatments and predict their aesthetic outcomes and to identify dysmorphic facial traits related to hormonal disorders and genetic syndromes. Although the analysis of facial sexual differences in juveniles of different ages has already been investigated, few studies have approached this topic with three-dimensional (3D) geometric morphometric (GMM) analysis, whose interpretation may add important clinical insight to the current understanding. This study aims to investigate the location and extent of facial sexual variations in juveniles through a spatially dense GMM analysis. We investigated 3D stereophotogrammetric facial scans of 304 healthy Italians aged 3 to 18 years old (149 males, 155 females) and categorized into four different age groups: early childhood (3-6 years), late childhood (7-12 years), puberty (13-15 years), and adolescence (16-18 years). Geometric morphometric analyses of facial shape (allometry, general Procrustes analysis, Principal Component Analysis, Procrustes distance, and Partial Least Square Regression) were conducted to detail sexually dimorphic traits in each age group. The findings confirmed that males have larger faces than females of the same age, and significant differences in facial shape between the two sexes exist in all age groups. Juveniles start to express sexual dimorphism from 3 years, even though biological sex becomes a predictor of facial soft tissue morphology from the 7th year of life, with males displaying more protrusive medial facial features and females showing more outwardly placed cheeks and eyes. We provided a detailed characterization of facial change trajectories in the two sexes along four age classes, and the provided data can be valuable for several clinical disciplines dealing with the craniofacial region. Our results may serve as comparative data in the early diagnosis of craniofacial abnormalities and alterations, as a reference in the planning of personalized surgical and orthodontic treatments and their outcomes evaluation, as well as in several forensic applications such as the prediction of the face of missing juveniles.
健康人群面部性二态模式的特征分析可为制定功能有效的手术治疗方案、预测美学效果以及识别与激素紊乱和遗传综合征相关的面部畸形特征提供有价值的规范数据。尽管不同年龄青少年面部性别差异的分析已有研究，但很少有研究采用三维（3D）几何形态测量（GMM）分析来探讨这一主题，而这种分析的解读可能会为当前的认识增添重要的临床见解。本研究旨在通过空间密集的GMM分析来研究青少年面部性别差异的位置和程度。我们对304名年龄在3至18岁的健康意大利人（149名男性，155名女性）进行了3D立体摄影测量面部扫描，并将其分为四个不同年龄组：幼儿期（3 - 6岁）、童年后期（7 - 12岁）、青春期（13 - 15岁）和青少年期（16 - 18岁）。对面部形状进行几何形态测量分析（异速生长分析、广义普氏分析、主成分分析、普氏距离和偏最小二乘回归），以详细描述每个年龄组的性二态特征。研究结果证实，同年龄男性的面部比女性大，且所有年龄组中两性面部形状均存在显著差异。青少年从3岁开始表现出性二态性，尽管从7岁起生物学性别就成为面部软组织形态的预测指标，男性面部中部特征更突出，女性脸颊和眼睛位置更靠外。我们详细描述了两性在四个年龄阶段的面部变化轨迹，所提供的数据对于处理颅面区域的多个临床学科可能具有重要价值。我们的研究结果可作为颅面异常和改变早期诊断的比较数据，在个性化手术和正畸治疗计划及其效果评估中作为参考，以及在一些法医应用中，如预测失踪青少年的面部。
