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Sex estimation using external morphology of the frontal bone and frontal sinuses in a contemporary Czech population

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Abstract

Sex estimation is a task of utmost importance in forensic anthropology and bioarcheology. Along with the pelvic bone, the skull is the most important source of sexual dimorphism. On the human skull, the upper third of the face (i.e., the frontal bone) is one of the most significant sexually dimorphic structures useful in anthropological research, especially when studied by methods of virtual anthropology. This study was focused on sex estimation using the form and shape of the external surface of the frontal bone with or without the inclusion of its sinuses. The study sample consisted of 103 cranial CT images from a contemporary Czech population. Three-dimensional virtual models of the frontal bones and sinuses were analyzed using geometric morphometrics and multidimensional statistics: coherent point drift-dense correspondence analysis (CPD-DCA), principal component analysis (PCA), and support vector machine (SVM). The whole external frontal surface was significantly different between males and females both in form and shape. The greatest total success rate of sex estimation based on form was 93.2%, which decreased to 86.41% after crossvalidation, and this model identified females and males with the same accuracy. The best estimation based on shape reached a success rate of 91.26%, with slightly greater accuracy for females. After crossvalidation, however, the success rate decreased to 83.49%. The differences between sexes were significant also in the volume and surface of the frontal sinuses, but the sex estimation had only 64.07% accuracy after crossvalidation. Simultaneous use of the shape of the frontal surface and the frontal sinuses improved the total success rate to 98.05%, which decreased to 84.46% after crossvalidation.

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Funding

This research was supported by the Grant Agency of Charles University (project no. 1590218).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Viničná 7, 128 44, Prague 2, Czech Republic

    Markéta Čechová, Ján Dupej, Jaroslav Brůžek, Šárka Bejdová & Jana Velemínská

  2. Department of Software and Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Malostranské náměstí 25, 118 00, Prague 1, Czech Republic

    Ján Dupej

  3. Department of Radiology, Hospital Na Homolce, Roentgenova 2, 150 30, Prague 5, Czech Republic

    Martin Horák

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  1. Markéta Čechová
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  2. Ján Dupej
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Correspondence to Markéta Čechová.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants from the contemporary Czech population included in the study.

This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Čechová, M., Dupej, J., Brůžek, J. et al. Sex estimation using external morphology of the frontal bone and frontal sinuses in a contemporary Czech population. Int J Legal Med 133, 1285–1294 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-019-02063-8

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