Cephalometric analysis has a remarkable problem: the clinical knowledge around it is vast, rigorously developed, and largely inaccessible. The foundational work — Steiner's landmark 1953 paper, Ricketts' later contributions, the Björk-Jarabak implant studies — sits behind institutional paywalls or in textbooks that cost more than a semester of tuition. Residents learn by osmosis. Practicing clinicians rely on the software they were trained on, often without a clear understanding of the measurements it generates.
We built BCeph to fix the access problem: a free, browser-based tool that runs Steiner, Ricketts, McNamara, and nine other analyses from a single landmark set, entirely on your device. Today we're opening the BCeph Journal to address the knowledge problem alongside it.
What the Journal Covers
The BCeph Journal is not a marketing blog. It is an editorial space for substantive writing about cephalometric analysis and the clinical decisions it informs. Concretely, that means:
- Analysis deep-dives. Each of the analysis systems in BCeph will get its own thorough guide — the history behind it, the measurements it includes, the normative values, how to interpret outliers, and where it falls short. The Steiner analysis guide is already live as a reference for what these look like.
- Clinical discussions. How do you approach a hyperdivergent Class II with proclined incisors? When does an ANB of 5° warrant orthognathic planning versus camouflage? These are the questions where cephalometrics meets clinical judgment, and they deserve more public discussion than they currently get.
- Software updates. When BCeph adds new analyses, improves an existing module, or changes how it generates reports, we'll document the reasoning here — not just the changelog.
- Research summaries. The cephalometric literature is active. New population norms, reliability studies, and comparisons between analysis systems appear regularly. We'll summarise the most clinically relevant work in language that doesn't require a subscription to read.
- Case discussions. Worked examples with landmark placement rationale, how the numbers were interpreted, and what treatment decisions followed — with all patient data fictionalised or used with permission.
Who This Is For
The primary audience is orthodontists in active practice — clinicians who run cephalometric analyses regularly and want to think more carefully about what the numbers mean. But the journal is also written to be useful to:
- Orthodontic residents who are learning to interpret ceph tracings and want a reference that goes beyond what a textbook chapter covers.
- Dental students encountering cephalometrics for the first time and looking for a clearer introduction than a lecture slide deck provides.
- Educators who want to link their students to well-written reference material.
- General dentists and oral surgeons who occasionally work with cephalometric data and want to understand what they're looking at.
We write assuming clinical training — that you understand what a malocclusion is, what the maxilla and mandible are, what a lateral cephalogram shows. We do not write assuming familiarity with any particular analysis system or software tool.
Why We're Writing This
The honest reason is that we kept writing long explanations inside BCeph's interface — tooltips that became paragraphs, help text that turned into guides — and eventually accepted that what we were writing was better suited to an editorial format than a UI component.
The broader reason is that BCeph's value proposition is not just a free tool: it is a free tool that people understand how to use well. An orthodontist who knows why the SN plane introduces bias in patients with steep cranial bases will use BCeph more intelligently than one who does not. A resident who understands Björk-Jarabak's vertical index will catch things in the report that a clinician relying on software alone might miss.
Our commitment: no fabricated statistics, no commercial claims we can't support, no content written for search rankings at the expense of clinical accuracy. If we don't know something, we'll say so.
What Comes Next
The next post in the journal looks at why BCeph is permanently free — the architecture that makes it sustainable, and the business model that doesn't require monetising your patient data. After that, we'll be publishing analysis guides for Ricketts and McNamara, and a clinical discussion on how to choose between analysis systems when a patient presents with an unusual skeletal pattern.
If there's a topic you'd like us to cover — a measurement you find confusing, an analysis system you want a deeper dive on, a clinical scenario you'd like worked through — you can reach us at the address in the BCeph app.
In the meantime: if you haven't tried BCeph yet, it takes about ninety seconds to run your first analysis.