Facial Soft Tissue Depths in Craniofacial Identification (Part I): An Analytical Review of the Published Adult Data

• NCJ Number: 225586
• Journal: Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 53 Issue: 6 Dated: November 2008 Pages: 1257-1272
• Author(s): Carl N. Stephan Ph.D.; Ellie K. Simpson Ph.D.
• Date Published: November 2008
• Length: 16 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: For Part II of this two-part series, see NCJ-225586.

Annotation

This analytical review of published data on adult facial soft-tissue depths, which are important for the reconstruction of craniofacial features for victim identification from skulls, sought to determine the validity of continued data collection; the usefulness of the existing data subcategorizations; and whether a synthesis of the data is possible for the production of a manageable soft-tissue-depth library.

Abstract

Four conclusions were drawn from the findings. First, no clear secular trends on soft-tissue depth at frequently investigated landmarks on the skull were found. Second, there is wide variation in soft-tissue depth measures for different measurement techniques irrespective of whether living persons or cadavers were involved in the study. Third, no clear clustering of non-Caucasoid data far from the Caucasoid means were found. Fourth, minor differences were found in soft-tissue depths for adult males and females. Given these findings, data were pooled across studies using weighted means and standard deviations in order to cancel out random and opposing study-specific errors and produce a single soft-tissue-depth table with increased sample sizes. This investigation demonstrates that new studies will maximize their value by seeking to overcome limitations inherent in the current data, that is, problems associated with standardization, measurement error, and application error, which are of primary concern. The study conducted literature searches for publications concerned with mean facial soft-tissue depths using Medline, Current Contents, and traditional methods (reference lists of other articles). Data from 66 studies were obtained. The soft-tissue-depth variables were sequentially analyzed in a hierarchical order, starting with year of measurement, then sequentially by method of measurement, race, and sex. 6 tables, 6 figures, and 112 references