In an effort to establish guidelines to aid practitioners in achieving optimal aesthetic outcomes during cosmetic lip augmentation, Brian J. F. Wong, MD, PhD, et al, sought to evaluate the most attractive lip dimensions in Caucasian women. Assessments were based on attractiveness ranking of surface area, ratio of upper to lower lip, and dimensions of the lip surface area relative to the lower third of the face.
The researchers first used synthetic morph frontal digital images of the faces of 20 white women (ages 18 to 25) to generate five varied lip surface areas for each face, for a total of 100 faces. They cardinally ranked the faces by attractiveness via developed conventional and internet-based focus groups, and a summed ranking score of each face was plotted to quantify the most attractive surface area. In the second phase of the study, they created four variants of 15 of the most attractive images, manipulating upper to lower lip ratios while maintaining the most attractive surface area. Each ratio was ranked by attractiveness by 428 internet-based focus group participants. In the third phase, the surface area from the most attractive faces was used to determine the total lip surface area relative to the lower facial third.
Dr. Wong, et al, found that the most attractive lip surface area represents a 53.5% increase from baseline, an upper to lower lip ratio of 1:2, and a surface area equal to 9.6% of the lower third of the face. “Lip dimensions and ratios derived in this study may provide guidelines in improving overall facial aesthetics and have clinical relevance to the field of facial plastic surgery,” they wrote.
The study was published online February 16, 2017, in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery.
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