Ear concha.

This article classifies man's ear concha to defined shape groups where the concha is the hollow area next to the ear canal. Quantitative results about the ear concha shapes as well as their classification into 36 defined shape groups are also reported. This quantitative survey is an additional step in analyzing the shape of face parts, where, in a article published in The Journal of Craniofacial Surgery (2011;22:1-4), nose shapes were analyzed quantitatively and classified into 14 shapes. It should be noted that in Google, under the subject, "Tamir the Journal of Craniofacial Surgery," the survey about noses is mentioned about 120 times! To the best of the author's knowledge, the quantitative approach on the shapes of ear concha has never been implemented before. The results are based on 2425 pictures of real ears. The major results are as follows: (1) The author succeeded in classifying all subjects' ear concha into 36 groups as demonstrated in a figure (numbers in the bottom left of each image are the absolute number of concha of a certain type; those in the bottom right indicate the percentage). (2) The most widespread concha is number 29, which appeared 393 times and is 16.2% of the total number. The less widespread shape is number 34, which appeared only once (0.04% of the total). In addition to the numerical results, the subjects were evaluated with respect to a human's ear--anatomy, shapes, and relation to a human's character.