NCJ Number
223387
Journal
Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 53 Issue: 3 Dated: May 2008 Pages: 612-619
Date Published
May 2008
Length
8 pages
Annotation
In the prediction of facial features from skulls, there are differences of opinion regarding the position of the eyeball in skull planes other than the anteroposterior plane and the canthi positions relative to the bony orbital margins of the skull, so the current study attempted to clarify the aforementioned relationships by dissecting four adult human cadavers.
Abstract
The most notable finding was that the eyeballs were not centrally positioned within the skull orbits, as the most recent craniofacial-identification literature has claimed. Rather, the eyeballs were consistently positioned closer to the orbital roof and lateral orbital wall by 1-2 mm on average; this finding is consistent with the earlier anatomical literature. Although these estimation errors for eyeball positioning are small, several factors make them meaningful: the orbital region is heavily used for facial recognition; the width error is doubled because the eyes are bilateral structures; the eyes are sometimes used to predict/assess other soft tissue facial structures; and the net error in facial approximation rapidly accumulates with the subsequent prediction of each independent facial feature. Although the small sample size limits conclusive generalizations, these new data have immediate application to craniofacial-identification practice, because the results are evidence-based. In contrast, metric data have never been published in support of the eyeball's central positioning. Further quantification of the eyeball position in larger samples is warranted, preferably for younger individuals (the current sample had a mean age of 83 years). 3 tables, 6 figures, and 49 references