Reproducibility of 3D scanning in the periorbital region

Sci Rep. 2021 Feb 11;11(1):3671. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-83335-5.

Abstract

The reproducibility of scanning in the periorbital region with 3D technology to enable objective evaluations of surgical treatment in the periorbital region was assessed. Facial 3D-scans of 15 volunteers were captured at different time points with a handheld Artec Space Spider structured light scanner. Two scans were made with a one minute interval and repeated after 1 year; for both a natural head position and with the head in a fixation-device. On assessing the area between the eyelashes and eyebrows, the medians of the average deviations between the various cross-sections of the one minute interval 3D-scans ranged from 0.17 to 0.21 mm at baseline, and from 0.10 to 0.11 mm when the minute-interval scanning was repeated one year later. The systematic differences when scanning in a natural head position and fixated position were comparable. The reproducibility of the 3D processing was excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient > 0.9). The repeated scanning deviations (baseline versus one year data) were well within the accepted clinical threshold of 1 mm. Scanning with a hand-held 3D-scanning device (Artec Space Spider) is a promising tool to assess changes in the periorbital region following surgical treatment since the median deviations are well below the clinically accepted 1 mm measuring error, for both the natural head and fixated positions.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Face / diagnostic imaging*
  • Face / surgery
  • Female
  • Healthy Volunteers
  • Humans
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional*
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Orbit / diagnostic imaging*
  • Orbit / pathology
  • Orbit / surgery
  • Radionuclide Imaging