Morphometric Sex Identification Based on Paranasal Sinus Dimensions in the Indian Population: A CBCT Based Study

Introduction: The creation of technologies using anatomical components like the maxillary sinus and frontal sinus that might preserve their stability yet after extreme events, are helpful for forensic investigations because sex determination is a crucial component of determining the profile of an individual.

Aim: To determine the sex using Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) scans, in a South Indian community by measuring the frontal and maxillary sinuses.

Material and Methods: The present cross-sectional study was conducted in the Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth University, IGIDS, Pondicherry, India, from 1st March 2021 to 31st March 2022. Analysis included 45 CBCT scans from 22 males and 23 females were subjected to volumetric measures in the maxillary sinus and frontal sinus. Applying NNT software, the volume measurement was carried out. The data was used to feed into a sex identification mathematical model. For evaluation, the student’s t-test has been used.

Results: In the total study subjects, the mean age of males was 36.909 years and of females was 36.304 years. Only the volume of the frontal sinus varied significantly among males and females (p-value<0.001). The discriminant function analysis equation showed that 50% of males and 91.3% of females correctly identified their gender. According to the cross-validated categorisation, 71.1% of the people were accurately categorised altogether.

Conclusion: Segregation identification, which was validated with evaluations in the frontal and maxillary sinuses with CBCT scans, is another technique for identifying individuals who identify as Indian. The present study shows that paranasal sinus morphologic evaluation is a useful method for identifying a person’s gender.