Using Cephalometric Analysis for Gender Determination

Background and Objective: Gender determination has an important role in identification in forensic medicine. studying paranasal sinuses is very useful in identification of burnt corpse from accidents such as plane crashes. So, the purpose of the present study was to establish a new method for gender determination using maxillary sinus index from lateral cephalometric radiographs and to establish the reliability of maxillary sinus for gender determination. In addition to pelvix, the skull is the most easily sexed portion of the skeleton, but the determination of the gender from the skull is not well reliable until after puberty.Material and Methods:A total of 50 healthy subjects (25 males and 25 females) of age group 25–55 years were selected for the study by simple random sampling. The participants were told about the procedure and subjected to lateral cephalogram with ideal radiation protection measures under exposure factors as applicable to their age. The radiographs were then stored with participants details incorporated. All radiographs were interpreted and the width, length, and height of the maxillary sinuses in addition to the total distance across both sinuses were measured using next generation softwareFinding: We found a significant difference between men and women such as the maximum height, maximum width and the maximum distance between the right and left maxillary sinuses in all of our subjects. We also found that the highest accuracy for sex determination was related to the maximum distance between the sinuses and the lowest to the maximum width of the right sinus.Conclusion: Regardless of age, It can be concluded that maxillary sinuses height , width and distance between the sinuses on lateral cephalographs can be used for sex determination of adult human subjects.There is a statistically significant difference in the height and width of maxillary sinuses between males and females. So morphometric analysis of maxillary sinus can be used as a reliable tool in gender determination.

Keywords:

Gender Determination , Cephalometric Analysis , sinus height and width , Lateral cephalogram