Gender Determination Using Digital Lateral Cephalograms: A Discriminant Function Analysis

Gender determination can help establishing a biological profile of the human body remains. Since the pelvic and skull remains are the most unyielding parts of human skeleton, identifying the dead bodies from these two parts would be very useful. After coaxial bone, the skull is the most gender-discriminated portion of the human skeleton. Since no determination study have been reported in Iranian population, present study aimed to determine gender by measuring 12 craniomandibular parameters and provide specific discriminant function scores in a selected population in Mashhad, Iran.

a total of 202 digital lateral cephalograms of healthy adults, (101 males and 101 females) in the age range of 18 to 50 years were selected. 14 cephalometric points were utilized, which enabled tracing of 11 linear measurements and an angle. All cephalometric points and measurements were traced by onyxceph® version 2.6 software.

Based on the analyses, among the chosen parameters, facial height (N-Me), mandibular ramus height (AR-Go), mandibular plane (Me-Go), frontal sinus width (FsWd) contributed the most for sexual dimorphism. The discrimination accuracy was 87.6% (84.2% in males and 91.1% in females). All the linear measurements were significantly larger in males except for angular variable which showed no significant difference between the two genders. 

According to the present findings, cephalometric craniomandibular parameters could be utilized to discriminate the gender of human remains using discriminant function analysis (DFA) in the selected Iranian population.