Anthroposcopy

Anthroposcopy (from the Greek word anthropos,”human’, and skopein, “examine”) means judging the body’s built by inspection.

Visual assessment, one of the oldest methods of examination, still used in medicine today, is not reliable because the cri-teria for judgment are highly subjective.

The examiner’s judgment is predominant as it is influenced by his/her aesthetic perception and experience. For example a great value of experience is necessary in determining the approximate size of a fea-ture, including the ability to discriminate taxonomy of small, medium and large features.

For the identification of craniofacial features the main problems are caused by the three-dimensional nature of the face and espe-cially by the impulse to make estimates based on subconscious comparisons of the sizes of various facial features.

With respect to this, visual evaluation alone does not provide enough information about the extent of a defect or morphology of anatomical structures. Errors apart from the examiner’s failing may arise due to the method of the examination, the lighting conditions and therefore anthropometric confirmation is required.

Anthropometrically oriented studies are part of medical research and deal with measuring and analyzing absolute quantities and proportions of the human body, including the head. Face anthropometry has applications in clinical diagnostics as well as in operation planning, forensics and The Arts.

For clinical diagnosis based on Anthropometry, data are collected from a popula-tion of individuals and are further analyzed in order to extract a norm for facial features.