Craniofacial Measurements of Donors and Recipients Correlate with Aesthetic Outcome in Virtual Face Transplantation.

Background: Face transplantation is an increasingly feasible option for patients with severe disfigurement. Donors and recipients are currently matched based on immune compatibility, skin characteristics, age, and gender. Aesthetic outcomes of the match are not always optimal and not possible to study in actual cases due to ethical and logistical challenges.

Facial appearance transfer and persistence after three-dimensional virtual face transplantation.

Background: Facial appearance transfer from donor to recipient in face transplantation is a concern. Previous studies of facial appearance transfer and facial appearance persistence (preservation of the recipient's facial likeness) in face transplants simulated using two-dimensional photographic manipulations found low facial appearance transfer (2.6 percent) and high facial appearance persistence (66 percent).

Noninvasive vascular images for face transplant surgical planning.

Objective: Face transplantation replaces substantial defects with anatomically identical donor tissues; preoperative vascular assessment relies on noninvasive imaging to separate and characterize the external carotid vessels and branches. The objective is to describe and illustrate vascular considerations for face transplantation candidates.

Methods: Novel noninvasive imaging using computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging over 3 spatial dimensions plus time was developed and tested in 4 face transplant candidates.