91 Determination of intra-oral surface areas cadavers due to a limited field of view. The missing data were reconstructed in Meshmixer by flat filling the defect; for this purpose, the “Inspector” analysis tool of Meshmixer was used. Given this fact, the surface area of the palate can be considered a calculated approximation for some cadavers. However, on average, the palatal surface area found in the present study (20.0 cm2) was in accordance with two other studies (ranging between 18.0 and 20.1 cm2) [8, 19]. Besides, it has to be noted that soft tissues of living persons are more flexible than those of embalmed cadavers. In line, several articles mention that embalming procedures following Thiel’s method (main component boric acid) or Imperial College London soft-preservation (main component 80% phenol) give better flexibility and tissue quality than other methods [4, 6, 12, 25]. The embalming technique in the current study might have led to the solidification of the soft tissues. CONCLUSION The current study presents a reproducible technique for the determination of intra-oral surface areas using CBCT and digital analysis. In addition, this study indicates that moderate, but statistically significant, correlations exist between (1) the length of the head and the palatal surface area, as well as (2) the depth of the head and the surface area of the tongue. Based on these findings, we postulate that it would be possible to estimate individual intra-oral surface areas in situ by measuring facial features. 4
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