Application of Visagism Concept to Assess the Co-Relation between the Temperament and Smile Esthetics: A Clinical Study

Background: Ability of a person to express a wide range of emotions with the movement of teeth and lips is called as a smile. Dentogenic concept considers gender, personality, age in harmonizing shapes of teeth with the face. Personality is unique for an individual. Unveiling personality traits, desires of the individual, translating them into natural tooth shapes to maintain the psychodentofacial harmony poses a major challenge to the clinician in designing a smile. Visagism is a novel concept that helps the dentists in providing restorations that involve esthetics psychological and social features of the created image, which influences the individual’s emotions. It involves the customization of an image.

Aim and Objectives: To assess the co-relation between the smile esthetics and mental temperaments or personalities through the application of the concept of visagism.

Methodology: A Digital camera (DSLR) for capturing the photographs and smile designing software will be used. Each subject will be instructed to occlude the teeth while capturing photographs. A validated questionnaire study will be conducted that will help to discover temperament of the subject. The answers will be evaluated and maximum score of the responses out of the list will be dominant temperament in that individual.

Expected Outcome: Co-relation between this study might help clinicians to accurately assess the correlation between the temperament and the smile esthetics and eventually develop proper customisation of a smile with respect to the personality of the patient.

Conclusion: If computer-assisted smile design and application of visagism concept would be accurate and reproducible, this might help and improve the planning of smile designing, the oral rehabilitations.