Estimation of sex from computed tomography images of skull measurements in an adult Turkish population

Abstract

Background Nowadays, data on the anthropometric measurements of populations is needed in many areas, especially forensic and legal. Using various methods, researchers obtain various data such as race, sex, and age, and thus provide identification of the material used. Morphological or metric methods are often used for identification. Purpose To evaluate the usefulness of the results of skull measurements using computed tomography (CT) to determine sex in a Turkish population. Material and Methods We analyzed 300 male and 300 female CT images of Turkish individuals with an age range of 21–50 years. Maximum cranial length, maximum cranial breadth, bimastoid diameter, bizygomatic diameter, and bigonial breadth were measured by CT tomography. All data were subjected to discriminant function analyses for estimating sex. Intra-observer and inter-observer variances of the measurements were examined using intraclass correlation coefficient analysis. Results Discriminant function analysis indicated that there was a significant difference between male and female with 88% accuracy. Discriminant function for estimation of sex was obtained with satisfactory accuracy rates for the parameters used. Conclusion This study confirms that skull measurements show sexual dimorphism in the Turkish population, and also suggests that it may be useful to use CT to assess skull anthropometric measurements.