Orbital volume changes during growth and development in human children assessed using cone beam computed tomography

Objectives: To measure growth-related changes in orbital volume from childhood to the late teenage years using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) scans. Methods: This retrospective cohort study involved 65 (24 male, 41 female) healthy Caucasian children (ages 6–18 years) with existing serial craniofacial CBCT scans. CBCT scans were available for 292 orbits. Each orbit was transformed into a closed space with well-defined boundaries, and orbital volume was measured using manual segmentation. A novel statistical analysis was applied to extract the maximum amount of longitudinal information from the data. Intra- and inter-operator correlation coefficients were calculated from replications performed on a random subset of 10% of the sample. Results: Orbital volume increased at a rate of 1–2% annually until the late teenage years. Intra- and inter-operator agreement between repeated measurements were >90%. Conclusions: Orbital volume increases by 1–2% per year throughout childhood continuing until the late teenage years. This annual increase is large enough to be clinically relevant as it may lead to less-than-optimal long term surgical outcomes when reconstructive surgery for the pediatric anophthalmic socket is required.