Original Research Article Facial Width and Inter-Pupillary Distance - A Useful Tool for Superimposition Technique

Abstract

Craniofacial superimposition technique was used for identification, when a skull of a missing person is
recovered, by comparing with ante-mortem photographs or video. Parameters like inter-pupillary distance
and bizyomatic width/ facial width of the human face are used in the superimposition technique in order
to identify a missing person. The study was conducted to find out the mean facial width and mean interpupillary
distance separately in both males & females and correlation between these parameters. This study
was conducted in 100 healthy subjects (50 males & 50 females) in the age group of 19 to 22 years at the
Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences, Uttarakhand. Interpupillary distance (IPD) and facial width (FW)
were measured by means of vernier callipers. The data was compiled and analyzed by computer software
SPSS version 20. Among the females, descriptive analysis of quantitative data showed that the mean IPD
was 4.8272 ± .37395, mean FW was 12.4240 ± .69151 and Pearson Correlation coefficient was 0.168.
Among the males, mean IPD was found out to be 5.9365 ± 0.37072, mean FW was 16.8290 ± 1.11108 and
Pearson Correlation coefficient was 0.216. The mean value of both, IPD and FW were higher in males as
compared to females.
A weak correlation was found in both sexes and no statistically significant correlation was found in face
width and Interpupillary distance in both males and females as the p value for male was 0.133 and for female
it was 0.245.