Heredity of morphological facial features: geometric morphometric analysis of 3D virtual models of the human face

In this master thesis, heritability of human facial morphology was observed in families from the phenotypic point of view. With the use of Vectra facial scanner, 3D virtual facial models of 121 individuals from 30 families were taken. Each family was composed of the parents and at least two adult children. Surface nets of the face were evaluated by the geometric morphometrics methods (coherent point drift - dense correspondence analysis, principal component analysis, Hotteling T2 test). Facial dimensions were evaluated by methods of classical anthropometry (Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficient, multiple regression analysis, canonical correlations). With the use of geometric morphometrics methods, the whole face, orbitonasal and orbital areas were analysed. In this part of research, no relation was found between facial morphology of parents and children. The difference of distances between children and their parents and children and unrelated individuals was not statistically significant. However, statistically significant similarity was found among siblings compared to unrelated individuals and increased with reducing facial area. The lowest p-values were found for the variability of shape in orbital area. With the use of methods of classical anthropometry, an effect of the sex of children..