DeCA: A Novel Tool for the Compressive Quantification of Facial Asymmetry
Precise quantification of facial asymmetry is important for diagnosis, treatment planning, and assessment of treatment outcomes in orthodontics and orthognathic surgery, particularly for patients with significant facial asymmetry such as those born with orofacial clefts or other congenital anomalies. This presentation will describe the need for such assessment and emphasize the existing subjectivity in facial asymmetry perception by observers (laypeople and dental professionals). It will introduce a tool that we have developed called DeCA (Dense Correspondence Analysis), which is available on the open-source platform of 3D Slicer (freeware). This tool harnesses the combined power of 3D imaging and computational 3D dense surface mapping tools for the comprehensive analysis of global and regional facial asymmetry. It outputs asymmetry "scores" which can be used for the assessment of treatment outcomes and growth changes for clinical purposes as well as research studies.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the need for objective quantification of facial asymmetry in the fields of orthodontics and orthognathic surgery.
- Recognize the subjectivity which exists in the perception of facial asymmetry by observers (laypersons and dental professionals).
- Learn how the DeCA tool (Dense Correspondence Analysis) can be utilized to objectively “score” facial asymmetry for clinical and research use in Orthodontics and related fields.
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