3D Facial Anatomy and Expression Before and After Cleft Lip Repair
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Visualizing and Measuring Facial Expressions of Children with Cleft Lip using 3D Surface Data obtained from Depth Sensors
IRAS ID
240451
Contact name
Edmond Ho
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Northumbria University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 0 days
Research summary
According to the UK’s Equality Act 2010, Disfigurement (visible facial difference)
is included as a disability. In particular, cleft lip and palate is one of the most
common birth-related causes of visible facial difference with an incidence of 1 in
700. While a cleft lip could be surgically repaired, measuring the outcomes
following cleft lip repair involves a lot of human intervention,
which is time consuming and difficult to be standardized.The main goal of this project is to visualize and measure the changes in facial
expressions and anatomy of children with a cleft lip before and after cleft lip
repair. With the advancement of depth sensing technology, 3D surface
information can be captured using portable and affordable devices. We intend
to develop new software algorithms for cleft surgeons to acquire 3D facial
information from patients to measure the outcomes of operations using such
devices in a simple clinical setup.
We will aim at visualizing the face in 3D and measuring the properties such as
facial symmetry and smoothness of the transition between expressions by
capturing 3D information over time. These properties cannot be measured using
the static and sparsely captured 2D/3D images that are currently used in clinical
practice.REC name
London - Bloomsbury Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/1690
Date of REC Opinion
29 Oct 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion