RESUMO
Patient’s soft tissue profile plays a prominent role in orthodontic diagnosis and treatment planning, many researchers have defined various facial soft tissue parameters based on lateral cephalometric radiographs by using either anatomic point method or tangent line method, however, these methods differ in the way of constructing straight lines along the soft tissue profile. This study aimed to compare the reliability of the two drawing methods (anatomic point and tangent line method). The sample consists of 100 true lateral cephalometric radiographs of patients with normal occlusion and accepted facial profile aged (18-30) years, ten angular measurements along the soft tissue contour were measured by the 2 drawing methods by 3 orthodontist examiners and analyzed statistically to fined means and standard deviation and to be compared by intra-class correlation coefficient. The results showed the non-significant difference between the measurements of the two drawing methods, and both methods were reliable and consistence in soft tissue profile analysis.