Dr Gavin Chan
In this video I'm going to discuss beauty and the mathematics of beauty.
Leonardo Da Vinci studied beauty, he was obsessed with it.
He used ratios such as the Golden Ratio or Phi in his art work.
The golden ratio or phi is actually the ratio of two segments of a line divided at a certain
point where the ratio of the shorter segment of the line to the longer segment of the line
is the same ratio as the longer segment of the line to the whole line.
Phi or 1:1.618, that ratio is found throughout the world in all objects of beauty.
It's found in faces with beautiful proportions, it's found in nature say the nautilus shell,
it's found in flowers, it's found in all things that beautiful.
We can use phi to measure certain parts of the face and see how they compare in terms
of their ratio from one area to the next.
So in a way this is like a mathematical formula for recreating beauty.
We can make someone more beautiful by following these guidelines by using these mathematical
proportions.
Sometimes what makes us so afraid of beauty treatments or injectable treatments is what
we see in the media.
There are so many examples in magazines of celebrities who have had facial work or surgery
gone wrong and maybe the problem here is that the doctor or surgeon involved hasn't really
looked at the mathematics or proportions of beauty; they maybe haven't studied the golden
ratio or phi and they haven't applied these principles to their celebrity patients.
It is important therefore to not only use our own judgement but to also back this up
with some objective measurement.
Now we're going to demonstrate this today on our patient, Laura, where we'll measure
her face and use our sense of aesthetic judgement in combination with an objective measurement
using phi, the Golden ratio and try to achieve a more beautiful appearance for her.
We are able to place fillers into the face more accurately and create better proportions,
we can therefore use less filler and create a better affect and not end up with an overdone,
sort of puffy face look.
Now we're going to assess Laura's face.
She's a fit and healthy person who does quite a few different forms of exercise and keeps
very trim.
Her main concerns, like most patients, tend to focus on one or two areas and its interesting
when I asked her what her main areas of focus were she said really her crows feet and her
frown lines.
Now this is quite typical of what patients say to me during a consultation.
As important as it is to listen to your patient and value what they say, it's also important
for us as doctors to make a proper assessment of patient's faces to really give them the
best outcomes for their treatment, as well as the best value for what they're getting
done.
One of the first things that strike me with Laura's face is that she has lost a bit of
volume in key areas such as the temples and cheeks; and really replacing the volume in
these areas will actually help rejuvenate her face probably more so then taking away
a few wrinkles here and there.
So this is where phi callipers we spoke about earlier come into play.
Now we'll assess Laura's face using these callipers and the way we do this is by taking
these callipers and using the narrow end to measure a point of reference which is the
point between her eyes.
We do that like this.
Now this point never changes with aging, so we can use it on anyone of any age; and we
can use this to actually judge the size of the other areas and how much they should be
filled, or if they should be filler at all.
We'll start by measuring Laura's cheeks in comparison to her inter eye distance; and
in this case should be the width of this wide section of the calliper which is exactly 1.618
times the width of the narrow end.
So we'll just go to the side there and we can see she's actually spot on in terms of
the width of the cheek to the inner point of the eye.
She's actually got the exact distance of 1.618 times the distance of her inter eye distance.
So in terms of width Laura's face is actually a good width.
Now we'll go on to measure the length of Laura's nose, so if you just line this up, as so,
you can see that it's quite close to the length we expect, maybe a millimetre too long.
In terms of the width, that also should be this distance here, so her width is actually
quite good.
Now in terms of her chin, her chin should be approximately 1.618 times the inter eye
distance from the surface where the lips meet to chin and you can see her chin length is
quite excellent.
Her chin width should be approximately her inter eye distance there, again excellent.
Other areas that can be measured are the temples, and generally we expect the temples to be
flat or slightly concave.
If you have a look here, they are concave, so it probably needs a little bit of volume
filling, you can
see there's a little bit
of hollowness in those areas there.