NEW TELEVISION TECHNIQUE FOR NATURAL HEAD AND BODY POSTURE ANALYSIS

A new television technique that proved to be faster than conventional photographic analysis has been developed and applied to the evaluation of the head and body natural standing posture in 303 healthy children , ages 6 to 11, and in 186 healthy young adults. In the lateral plane all subjects had extended head (soft tissue Frankfurt plane), with par allel Camper's and occlusal planes. The neck was halfway between the h orizontal and vertical planes. Most angles significantly correlated wi th each other. The occlusal and neck angles showed a significant effec t of age, being larger in children than in adults. In children the nec k was more flexed, and the occlusal plane was more inclined downward. The results were in accord with previous photographic evaluations show ing that the applied method was reliable and could be usefully employe d in postural investigations. The results also confirmed that in healt hy subjects, regardless of age, the soft tissue frankfurt plane is ext ended, not horizontal.