Abstract
Introduction: The aim of this study was to examine whether dental professionals and lay people group do agree in their perception of digitally altered facial components or not.
Materials and Methods: A frontal photograph of a Saudi young man was taken, imported, and digitally altered to a series of images of 16 photographs. Eyes, nose, mouth, and chin were altered gradually from the original photograph and were rotated 1 degrees, 3 degrees, and 5 degrees. 225 raters (60 lay people, 41 orthodontists, 77 dentists, and 47 dental students) were invited and asked to evaluate the original and altered images using a visual analog scale.
Results: Lay people were less critical and gave higher ratings than dentists when evaluating rotated eyes of 5 degrees. Orthodontists gave higher ratings than lay people and dental students at distinguishing of 1 degrees of rotated nose. Orthodontists were less critical in rating larger alterations of the nose at 3 degrees than lay people. Orthodontists were also less discriminating of minor alterations of the lips. They could not detect mouth rotation of 1 degrees compared to lay people and dental students.
Conclusions: The results of this study underline the importance of developing an objective index to enumerate the magnitude of facial asymmetries.