Facial cues to age perception using three-dimensional analysis

To clarify cues for age perception, the three-dimensional head and face forms of Japanese women were analyzed. It is known that age-related transformations are mainly caused by changes in soft tissue during adulthood. A homologous polygon model was created by fitting template meshes to each study participant to obtain three-dimensional data for analyzing whole head and face forms. Using principal component analysis of the vertices coordinates of these models, 26 principal components were extracted (contribution ratios >0.5%), which accounted for more than 90% of the total variance. Among the principal components, five had a significant correlation with the perceived ages of the participants (p