Foramen magnum and mandibular dimensions as an aid in gender determination: a retrospective cone beam computed tomography (cbct) study

Author: 
Vani M.H, Subhash B.V, Asha R Iyengar, SeemaPatil and Revan Kumar Joshi

Background and objectives:- Gender determination becomes the first priority in the process of identification of a person by a forensic investigator. The Foramen magnum and mandible show sexual dimorphism and can be imaged using CBCT. Gender determination being population specific, the present study aimed to assess the utility of foramen magnum and mandibular osteometric measurements on CBCT images of a subset of Indian population for gender determination.
Methods:- The CBCT images of 150 subjects were retrieved from the archival records and assessed. Four foramen magnum measurements and six mandibular measurements were measured. All the measurements were subjected to direct discriminant function analysis and their reliability in gender determination was assessed.
Results:- All the Foramen magnum and mandibular measurements showed significant differences between males and females. The predictive accuracy in gender determination was 66.7% on combining all the four foramen magnum measurements and 86.7% on combining all the six mandibular measurements. On combining both the foramen magnum and mandibular measurements, the overall predictive accuracy in gender determination was 83.3%.
Interpretation & Conclusion:-Foramen magnum and mandibular measurements can be used for gender determination with good predictive accuracies.

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DOI: 
http://dx.doi.org/10.24327/ijcar.2019.20194.3936
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