90 Chapter 4 current study (173 ± 19 cm2) [19, 29]. This age-related increase of the surface area is partly due to the growth of the face and partly to the development of the dentition [15, 27, 29]. Adolescents showed an average intra-oral surface area of 167 ± 13 cm2, which is comparable to the findings of the present study [19]. Collins and Dawes also calculated the surface area for twenty living adults using the foil technique [8]. The mean surface area in their study was found to be 215 ± 13 cm2, which is larger than the surface area found in the present study, i.e. 173 ± 19 cm2. This difference could be attributed to the contribution of the teeth surface area to the total area. Collins and Dawes included subjects having an average of 28 teeth, whereas the cadavers in this study had an average of 8.7 teeth. For this reason, the surface area of the teeth in the study of Collins and Dawes (45 ± 5 cm2) is approximately twice the surface area of all the hard tissue measured in the present study (22 ± 11 cm2). In accordance with the present study, Collins and Dawes found comparable surface areas for the mucosa and the palate [8]. The mean surface areas of the total mucosa and palate in their study were 96 and 20 cm2, respectively, which is comparable to the present study. However, the surface area of the tongue differed from our study as Collins and Dawes found a surface area of 52 cm2 compared to 35 cm2 in the present study. Possibly, these differences may be caused by the incomplete measurement of the posterior tongue surface and variation in mouth opening of the cadavers. In some cases, the posterior tongue was not completely separated from the palate with the concomitant risk of missing data on the CBCT scan. Due to limited access to the oral cavity, it was not possible to verify whether the posterior part of the tongue was completely separated from the palate. Additionally, in the current study the length of the tongue was determined by a line on the dorsum of the tongue, corresponding to the bony pterygoid hamuli. However, the cadavers varied in mouth opening, which seemed to introduce variation in the length of the tongue. Consistent with the present study, Collins and Dawes found no significant gender differences in the surface areas for any of the intra-oral regions [8]. The current study revealed a significant difference in some face proportions between females and males. This finding is broadly supported by the work of other studies describing the association between gender and anthropometric orofacial measures, mentioning larger measures for males than females [13, 22, 30]. This study has also some potential limitations. It has to be taken into account that the upper part of the palate was imaged incompletely in some
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