An assessment of a stereophotogrammetric technique for the study of facial morphology in the child.

An assessment has been made of a stereophotogrammetric technique (Beard and Burke, 1967) for measuring and contouring the face. Its contouring capabilities depend on the skin surface texture of the subject. Adults have good skin texture and accurate contours can be drawn. Young children cannot be contoured satisfactorily because they lack adequate skin texture, and only linear measurements can be obtained with precision. The disadvantage of incomplete facial coverage was eliminated by using a pair of oblique exposures instead of the conventional frontal exposure. The need for mechanical head positioning was avoided by use of a sighting device incorporated in the system to orientate each exposure to a common datum.