Evaluation of soft tissue thicknesses with the purpose of facial reconstruction in Brazilian

Abstract

The auxiliary technique of identification known as Facial Reconstruction makes possible to obtain face identification from the contours of the tissue around the skull, increasing the probabilities of recognition. The reliability of this technique depends on the evaluation of the thickness of the soft tissues that covers the skull. Those measurements were evaluated on a sample of studied cadavers in São Paulo state, Brazil. The thickness has been manually measured using the needle puncture technique in 10 anatomical landmarks of the skull located in the midleline and in 11 bilateral points of 40 cadavers of both sexes, aged between 17 and 90 years, classified by skin color and nutritional state. Descriptive statistics calculations were made accordingly to T-tests, ANO VA and Tukey tests. Those calculations, when compared with other populations studies, showed different results, that lead to the need of using a specific table with values of the local population to implement the technique of facial reconstruction in skulls without an attributable identity