Perfect face dimensions measured

Scientists believe they have worked out the dimensions of the most attractive female face.

They say the key to the ideal arrangement of female facial features is the measurements between the eyes, mouth and ears.

Applying their results, the Canadian pop singer Shania Twain was rated as having the perfect visage.

The study, led by the University of Toronto, appears in the journal Vision Research.

The researchers asked students to rate the attractiveness of colour photographs of the same woman's face, laid out side by side.

Using photoshop, the researchers altered the vertical distance between the eyes and mouth, and the horizontal distance between the eyes in each image.

The features themselves never changed, just the distance between them, and the woman's face was only compared to her own.

Following a series of experiments, the researchers came up with the most attractive length and width ratios between features.

On length, the distance between a woman's eyes and mouth should be just over a third or 36%, of the overall length of her face, from hairline to chin.

For width, they calculated that the space between a woman's pupils should be just under half, or 46%, of the width of her face from ear to ear.