Facial Anthropometric Proportion of Chinese Han Nationality.

ABSTRACT

Facial anthropometric measurements play an important part not only in forensic cases but also in clinical treatments. The utilization of 2D photograph methods in facial anthropometric studies to found database with age, gender, ethnicity, and region was expanded by other races but little for Han nationality. This study was undertaken to describe reference ranges of facial anthropometric proportions of Han nationality and compare the anthropometric characteristics with other ethnicities. Our subjects focused on full-face photos of Han nationality in South China which consisted of 1176 healthy person (425 adult males, 421 adult females and 157 underage boys and 173 underage girls). Eight anthropometric landmarks on photos were examined by ImageJ software, and 7 anthropometric ratios were analyzed. The results indicated sex- and age- and ethnics-related anthropometric variations in Chinese Han nationality in South China. For adults, females have larger ratios in intercanthal-nasal width and lip height index and smaller nose width index; for impubes, boys were larger in lip height index and smaller in lip width ratios than girls, but as age achieved, the underage boys and girls exhibited a significantly larger nose width index and lip width index, smaller canthal index, intercanthal-nasal width and lip height index. Comparing with Japanese, India, North American and Persian, Chinese Han showed great difference in facial anthropometric proportions.