CT SCAN IMAGES ANALYSIS OF MAXILLARY SINUS DIMENSIONS AS A FORENSIC TOOL FOR SEXUAL AND RACIAL DETECTION IN A SAMPLE OF KURDISH POPULATION

Abstract

Despite the fact that the skull and other bones may be badly disfigured in victims who are incinerated, it became an urgent necessity to gender determination using maxillary sinuses as a useful tool of human skeletons in forensic medicine. The aim of the study: to determine the reliability and accuracy of maxillary sinus dimension measurement as a method for gender and racial identification through the use of reconstructed helical CT images. Material and Methods: This prospective study included cranial computerized tomography images (CT) of 119 (M: 57 and F: 62) of the Kurdish population of Sulaimani city of Iraq with an age range (20 - 75) years. All patients were examined on Spiral Computed Tomography Scanner from October 2014 to March 2015.The greatest measurements were taken from the width, length, and height of the maxillary sinuses. The descriptive and discriminate analyzes were performed by using the SPSS package program. Results The mean of the length, the width, and the height of maxillary sinus in males on both right and left sides were (35.90± 4.71, 36.63 ± 5.34) (25.74 ± 5.69 , 25.36 ± 6.03) and (32.86 ± 7.00 , 33.13± 6.87) mm, respectively but in females were (34.58 ± 4.21, 35.60 ± 3.94 ), (22.54 ± 4.74 and 21.53 ± 4.47) and (29.16 ± 7.20,29.25 ± 6.17 )mm respectively. The present study showed that the left maxillary sinus width was the best discrimination parameter, that could be used to study sex dimorphism with Prediction of 69.4% for female and 52.6% for male (overall accuracy = 61. 3%). The discriminative analysis showed that the accuracy of maxillary sinus measurements-i.e the ability of the maxillary sinus size to identify gender-was 71% in females and 56.1% of males (overall accuracy = 63.9%). Conclusion The study showed that the diameters of the maxillary sinus can be used as a guide and a useful tool for racial and sex determination.