Three-dimensional Normative Craniofacial Morphologic Development of Healthy Infants During the First Year of Life

Importance The development of craniofacial morphology in the first year of life is critical, especially when analyzed with longitudinal 3-dimensional photographs.

Objective To evaluate the development of the craniofacial region in healthy infants in the first year of life and provide treatment guidelines for craniofacial deformities such as orofacial clefts and deformational plagiocephaly.

Design, Setting, and Participants Three-dimensional (3D) photographs of included participants were captured using a 3dMD system. Participants were grouped by sex and age (1, 2, 4, 6, 9, and 12 months). We placed 32 craniofacial anatomical landmarks on 3D craniofacial photos. The thin-plate spline algorithm and closest-point matching were applied to transform a symmetric 3D template into a series of scanned images to calculate 3D composite heads at different ages.

Main Outcomes and Measures Average craniofacial meshes were calculated for each group. The growth patterns of the following anthropometric indices were determined: craniofacial height, depth, width, volume, body height, weight, body mass index (BMI), and head circumference.