Variability of the Shape of Intertragal Notch of the Auricle of Girls

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Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Currently, a large amount of data has been accumulated on the dimensions of the auricle (AU), in particular, in the area of the location of the intertragal notch (ITN). The results of the conducted studies provide information mainly on the metric characteristics of AU. Methods of geometric morphometry (GM) permit to make conclusions about the shape of the anatomical structure. There are no data in the literature on the study of the shape of ITN using GM methods, and the authors’ conclusions about the shape of individual parts of the AU are based on the use of only the descriptive method.

AIM: To study the shape of ITN of auricle of girls using GM methods.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study included 140 girls aged (18.99±0.47) years. The somatotype and cephalotype of the girls were determined, and the right and left AU were photographed. Marks were applied on the digitized images along the margins of the ITN using the screen digitizer tpsDіg2 2.31. The GM methods were realized using MorphoJ 1.06d program. The strength of influence of the cephalotype and somatotype of the girls on the ITN shape was determined. The critical significance level of Goodall’s F-criterion was determined at 0.05. The variability of the ITN shape was determined using the ‘thin-plate’ method. The obtained data were subjected to the discriminant analysis.

RESULTS: The influence of cephalotype on the shape of the ITN of the left AU showed low values of Goodall’s F-criterion — 0.82 (p=0.900). The deformation grids of the ITN of the left AU demonstrated the greatest changes of the ITN shape in the antitragus area and posterior-inferior part of the ITN. ANOVA of the Procrustes coordinates of the ITN of the right AU showed that the influence of the somatotype on the shape of the ITN was not statistically significant. The distribution of the shapes of the ITN of both the right and left AU in the coordinates of the first and second canonical variables looked more disjointed when grouping data by somatotypes. The Mahalanobis distance between the ITN shapes of the right and left AU was 0.025 (p <0.0001), and the classification accuracy of this model was determined at the level of 78.93%.

CONCLUSION: The study results show that the somatotype of girls compared to their cephalotype has a greater influence of the ITN shape of both the left and right auricles.

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About the authors

Aleksandr S. Volosnik

Saint Luka Lugansk State Medical University

Author for correspondence.
Email: alexandrvolosnik@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0178-659X
SPIN-code: 6741-5992
Russian Federation, Lugansk

Vladimir N. Voloshin

Saint Luka Lugansk State Medical University

Email: vvnvoloshin@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6596-3121
SPIN-code: 5630-3717

MD, Dr. Sci. (Medicine), Professor

Russian Federation, Lugansk

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Supplementary files

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2. Fig. 1. Application of marks on the intertragal notch in tpsDіg2 program.

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3. Fig. 5. Deformation grid of variation of the intertragal notch shape of the right auricle versus the notch shape of the left auricle.

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4. Fig. 2. Distribution of intertragal notch shapes (begining): a — left auricle in coordinates of the 1st and 2nd principal component; b — left auricle in coordinates of the 1st and 2nd canonical variables depending on the somatotype of women; c — left auricle in coordinates of the 1st and 2nd canonical variables with two classifiers: somatotype and cephalotype of women, as a grouping variable; d — right auricle in coordinates of the 1st and 2nd principal component when grouping women by cephalotypes; e — right auricle in coordinates of the 1st and 2nd principal component when grouping women by somatotypes; f — of the right auricle in coordinates of the 1st and 2nd canonical variables depending on the somatotype of women.

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5. Fig. 2. Distribution of intertragal notch shapes (finishing): i — right auricle in coordinates of the first and second canonical variables depending on the cephalotype of women; AU — auricle.

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6. Fig. 3. Variations of the intertragal notch shape of the left auricle relative to the consensus along the principal component 1 and 2 axes.

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7. Fig. 4. Variation of the shape of the intertragal notch of the right auricle relative to the consensus along principal component 1 and 2 axes.

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