Skull X-rays vs bio replicas

[somatropinpin]

I went to the ortho a few days ago and they x-rayed my head and teeth and stuff and when I saw the xray I was surprised to see that my skull didn't look the way that I thought it would. I don't look recessed normally but when i saw my x-ray it looked like one of the three images just below.


When I look up "normal human skull x-ray" things like this pop up.

I think that if someone was looking at this from an aesthetic POV then they would say that this is either recessed or downward grown, especially the midface area, because it doesn't look super projected when you compare it to man-made replicas.

When I just look up something like "skull" things like this come up

These are the types of skulls that you would be used to seeing in biology class or something like that but I feel like these types of bones are pretty unrealistic and surpass what the average person would look like.

Which one do you guys think is closer to what an average, somewhat good-looking person's bones would look like? Could it be pretty much the same bones but the Xray blurs it and creates the illusion of a worse skull? Also the chin should project past the teeth right? Because I couldn't find any images where the chin was past the teeth which is pretty weird.

I didn't have my phone to take a picture of my x-ray but maybe I can get that soon and then I'll post that and you guys can tell me.

 

[bossman]

Could it be pretty much the same bones but the Xray blurs it and creates the illusion of a worse skull?

No

TLDR: We don’t really have an “ideal skull”, but as far as jaw surgery is concerned this paper outlines how to perform a cephalometric analysis of a skull. A maxillofacial surgeon is best suited to assess your scans as per this approach (although many don’t). For implants, see my answer below:

Longer answer:

To truly understand the skeletal basis of exceptional features in all dimensions, you’d need to study the CT scans of models.

Of course you could look at a scan of someone and determine they have a good eye area or poor jawline definition. But the question of what movements / implant shape is necessary to augment this persons skull to have the perfect eye area and jawline would be impossible to answer correctly without studying the anatomical basis of these features in people who have them.

We have principles and reference points for what a developed face looks like. The best place to find this is the writings of Dr. Arnett. He himself is rumoured to have studied the faces of models to derive a lot of it. It gives a good idea of where your bones should be.

However some features cannot be corrected through moving your own bones. You might need additional bone mass, in the form of implants etc. And there are no well-defined principles for this.

The final thing to note is that augmentation to the skeleton, whether by implants or osteotomies do not translate to a linear change in the soft tissue. Research shows a genioplasty translates to the soft tissue far better than a chin implant. So the logic that osteotomies > implants is mostly true. How the soft tissue will react, to implants in particular is extremely difficult. So even if we had CT scans of models it would not automatically give way to the perfect implants as our soft tissue might not adapt well to it. Many more nuances to this matter.

 

[somatropinpin]

To truly understand the skeletal basis of exceptional features in all dimensions, you’d need to study the CT scans of models.

Salludon posted his x-ray on TikTok and I would say that it doesn't look as projected as people would expect it to based on what he looks like,
but I think that just comes from the bias of looking at the plastic replicas and thinking that that is average when in reality, Salludon's skull below is pretty much the best of the best.

So yeah that would be really cool if more people like him would post their x-rays so we could compare them