Automatic Comparison of Ecuadorian Facial Features with Marquardt Beauty Mask

Surgical specialists use facial analysis tools to evaluate human beauty, particularly in the context of reconstructive procedures. Among the tools used to perform facial analysis is the Marquardt Beauty Mask, a mask developed by Stephen Marquardt that represents the perfect proportions a face should have. This article shows the implementation of a web tool that uses computer vision to extract the differences between the proportions of the mask, considered an ideal model of beauty, and a facial photograph of a person. In addition, we performed a statistical analysis of the differences found between the features of 432 facial photographs of Ecuadorians and the mask. The results reveal that Ecuadorian faces, across all ethnicities and genders, show significant deviations in three of the four key distances used to evaluate the mask’s suitability. Only one distance aligns closely with the ideal proportions defined by the mask, with over 90% of individuals meeting this criterion. According to the results, the measures calculated on the faces differ considerably from those in the Marquardt Beauty mask. These differences show that Ecuadorians have faces that are wider and longer than the mask. Therefore, the widespread use of tools built for a single archetype of people could be inaccurate in evaluating the harmony and symmetry of a face.