AVERAGE SUTURAL CURVATURE: AN INTUITIVE QUANTITATIVE MEASURE OF SUTURE COMPLEXITY

The perception of complexity of a suture is largely derived from the severity and number of curves of the pattern, but no current measures of suture complexity use this property. Curvature is a mathematical measure of the sharpness of the curve at a point, similar to the second derivative. The average of the curvature of points along a suture pattern (ASC, Average Sutural Curvature) provides a measure of the pattern's complexity, and is proportional to suture index (SI). Since it is a property of the point on the pattern and not the entire suture, ASC can be calculated over a portion of the pattern, unlike other measures of complexity. It can be used to examine complexity of parts of the pattern to study questions not otherwise addressable, such as comparing internal and external portions. The distribution of curvature is different for the four main categories of suture patterns: nautilitic, goniatitic, ceratitic and ammonitic.