Susuks or charm needles are a form of talisman inserted and worn subcutaneously, in the face and other parts of the body, in the belief that they will enhance or preserve the wearer's beauty, youth, charisma, strength or health, or bring success in business. This mystic practice is found among some south-east Asian people, especially Malayan and Muslim females. Most susuk wearers are secretive about their hidden talismans, but these gold or silver needles are being discovered with increasing frequency now that radiographs are used more widely. An understanding of this practice and an awareness of its existence is important to avoid misdiagnosis and mismanagement of these patients. The practice of susuk wearing and its relevance to dentistry is discussed. Nine cases of facial susuk wearers are presented and previous reports are reviewed.
Cephalometric data from 105 female subjects (35 Chinese, 35 Malay and 35 Indian) with good occlusion and aesthetic pleasing facial profiles (determined by a trained clinician and endorsed by the lay public) were analysed using the Steiner analysis. Statistical analysis of the data showed that while the cephalometric ideals of the Chinese and the Malay ethnic groups were rather similar, cephalometric differences existed between the Chinese and Indians as well as the Malays and Indians. Compared to the Chinese and Malays, the Indians appeared to have less prognathic mandibles and maxillae, less protrusive and proclined upper and lower incisors and also less protrusive upper and lower lips. These differences demonstrate intrinsic ethnic differences and emphasize the need to treat patients of different ethnic groups using cephalometric norms which are peculiar to their own group.
A cephalometric study using Downs' analysis was undertaken with lateral cephalometric radiographs for a mixed sample of 50 child, adolescent and young adult Indonesians who presented with Angle Class I occlusions. Significant differences between this study group and the published results from comparative racial types were found for Downs' angle of convexity, Y-axis and incisor inclinations, indicating that Indonesians can be differentiated from other races with similar occlusions by using Downs' analysis.
Temporary obturator is necessary for maxillectomy procedures to minimise functional disabilities of speech and the swallowing of food and fluid following surgery.l.2 It also provides a base to hold surgical packing and/ or tissue conditioners in place. This packing helps to restore function and counter act contraction during healing of the ,tissues at the operated site. Dental clinicians are often faced with the problem of surgical staffs requesting an obturator for their patients at short notice.This article describes a fast technique of constructing an immediate surgical obturator.
Ludwig's angina is a rare type of facial infection usually reported in adults. This paper presents a case of Ludwig's angina infection occurring in a 3 year-old Malay boy. The dentists must be able to detect such presentation early. Hospitalization for monitoring of airway is essential.
Recurrent aphthous ulcers of the mouth are difficult to treat because of no known definite aetiology. This paper presents the use of lactic acid bacteria thought to modulate the host immune response to affect improvements in the disease. Twenty-five patients with the disease were treated with 6 lactic bacteria capsules (in the form of OMX capsules) daily for a period of six months, and their responses were evaluated. Seventeen patients (73.9%) became free of the disease six months later, while 6 (26.1 %) experienced very dramatic improvements. Two patients were lost to follow-up. It is concluded that lactic acid bacteria is beneficial in the treatment of recurrent aphthous ulcers of the mouth.
Sézary syndrome is a rare form of primary cutaneous T cell lymphoma. It is a distinct systemic variant of mycosis fungoides, marked by erythroderma, lymphadenopathy and circulating cerebriform lymphocytes in the peripheral blood. We report a case of Sézary syndrome in a 61-year-old Malay man with a five-year history of indurated plaques, ulcers and tumours on the head and trunk, with characteristic findings on physical examination, skin biopsy, electron microscopy, immunophenotyping and peripheral blood film. A literature review on Sézary syndrome is presented.
This study is aimed at determining whether there exists a correlation between the relative dimensions of the nose and the face. Through this study, we hoped to give a normal range for the different races in Malaysia. We randomly chose 100 Malay, 50 Chinese and 50 Indian subjects. We chose equal numbers of male and female subjects, mainly in their 20's and 30's. There is a correlation between the length of the nose and the face among Malays, with 78% of the subjects measured having a nose:face ratio of less than 0.27. There is also a correlation between the breadth of the nose and the face among Malays, with 670/0 of the subjects having a ratio of less than 0.28. Similar correlations were found with Chinese and Indian subjects. The length and breadth of the nose in relation to the face is greater in males than in females. Further research is required before conclusive evidence is found for the existence or non existence of a correlation between the length and breadth of the nose and face in the different races in Malaysia. KEYWORDS: Correlation, length, breadth, nose, nace, different races.
The Hiding Heidi low-contrast 'face' test is a new paediatric contrast test to evaluate the ability to detect objects with low contrast. The purpose of the present study was to compare the Hiding Heidi low-contrast 'face' test (HH) with the Pelli-Robson contrast sensitivity test (PR) and the functional acuity contrast test (FACT) in the low-contrast assessment.
Orangutans display remarkable developmental changes and sexual differences in facial morphology, such as the flanges or cheek-pads that develop only on the face of dominant adult males. These changes suggest that facial morphology is an important factor in visual communication. However, developmental changes in facial morphology have not been examined in detail. We studied developmental changes in the facial morphology of the Borneo orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) by observing 79 individuals of various ages living in the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre (SORC) in Malaysia and in Japanese zoos. We also analyzed photographs of one captive male that were taken over a period of more than 16 years. There were clear morphological changes that occurred with growth, and we identified previously unreported sexual and developmental differences in facial morphology. Light-colored skin around the eyes and mouth is most prominent in animals younger than 3 years, and rapidly decreases in area through the age of approximately 7 years. At the same time, the scattered, erect hairs on the head (infant hair) become thick, dense hairs lying on the head (adult hair) in both sexes. The results suggest that these features are infant signals, and that adult signals may include darkened face color, adult hair, whiskers, and a beard, which begin to develop after the age of approximately 7 years in both sexes. In females, the eyelids remain white even after 10 years, and turn black at around the age of 20; in males, the eyelids turn black before the age of 10. The whiskers and beards of adults are thicker in males than in females, and are fully developed before the age of 10 in males, while they begin to develop in females only after approximately 20 years. White eyelids and undeveloped whiskers and beards may be visual signals that are indicative of young adult females. Our results also show that the facial morphology of the unflanged male is similar to that of the adult female, although it has also been pointed out that unflanged males resemble younger individuals.
The aim of this retrospective study was to study the clinical patterns of oro-facial infections presented and their management (or trends of management) at the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Dental Faculty, University of Malaya. These included the predisposing factors, presentations and management. This study reviewed the oro-facial infection cases over 15 years. The data was obtained from case note reviews of patients using specially designed proforma. A total number of 409 samples were included in this study. Majority of the patients were generally healthy with about 6.6% having diabetes mellitus. The common presentations were pain (47.4%), pus discharges (16.9%) and limitation of mouth opening (12.5%). The major site was in the submandibular region (18.9%) followed by cheek (13.2%). Most of the infections were from odontogenic source (63.2%). Other sources includes cysts (15.4%) and tumours (6.7%). Incision and drainage were the treatment of choice performed on 57.55% of patients. Monoantimicrobial therapy was the treatment instituted in 20.8% of cases.
Biometric analysis for identity verification is becoming a widespread reality. Such implementations necessitate large-scale capture and storage of biometric data, which raises serious issues in terms of data privacy and (if such data is compromised) identity theft. These problems stem from the essential permanence of biometric data, which (unlike secret passwords or physical tokens) cannot be refreshed or reissued if compromised. Our previously presented biometric-hash framework prescribes the integration of external (password or token-derived) randomness with user-specific biometrics, resulting in bitstring outputs with security characteristics (i.e., noninvertibility) comparable to cryptographic ciphers or hashes. The resultant BioHashes are hence cancellable, i.e., straightforwardly revoked and reissued (via refreshed password or reissued token) if compromised. BioHashing furthermore enhances recognition effectiveness, which is explained in this paper as arising from the Random Multispace Quantization (RMQ) of biometric and external random inputs.
Facial soft tissues are a major determinant of treatment choice. When Class I and Class II malocclusions were compared using finite-element analysis, morphologic differences were localized and quantified. This study highlights the importance of determining the timing, magnitude and direction offacial growth prior to treatment to achieve stable results.
Imaging is a keystone for the understanding and delivery of craniofacial health care and recent developments have led to many diverse technologies and approaches. This paper reviews new developments in three-dimensional imaging, as well as three-dimensional facial image acquisition. Visualization and convergence of the data from these technologies are also described for construction of patient-specific models.
Anomalies of the genitourinary tract occur in approximately 10% of the population and account for about one third of all congenital malformations in children (1). Congenital malformations involving the genitourinary system are major therapeutic challenges faced by the practising urologist.
This paper describes the use of stereophotogrammetry approach to measure and hence identify accurately threedimensional (3D) coordinates of important landmarks on a craniofacial surface. A "novel" technique dubbed as "natural features" technique was employed to accurately compute the 3D coordinates of selected craniofacial landmarks. The natural features technique involves the use of 3D coordinates of the natural features (such as acne, scar, corners of eyes, edge of mouth, point of chin, etc.) that appear on the craniofacial surface as an absolute stereophotogrammetric mapping control points. The 3D coordinates of the natural features were gained using digital photogrammetric bundle adjustment method. Validation of the proposed technique has firstly been carried out using mannequin and finally, it was applied on the real-life human faces. The result shows that the craniofacial landmark measurement accuracy of 0.8mm with one standard deviation can be successfully achieved by the proposed technique.
Skin detection has gained popularity and importance in the computer vision community. It is an essential step for important vision tasks such as the detection, tracking and recognition of face, segmentation of hand for gesture analysis, person identification, as well as video surveillance and filtering of objectionable web images. All these applications are based on the assumption that the regions of the human skin are already located. In the recent past, numerous techniques for skin colour modeling and recognition have been proposed. The aims of this paper are to compile the published pixel-based skin colour detection techniques to describe their key concepts and try to find out and summarize their advantages, disadvantages and characteristic features.