Introduction: Gender determination is pivotal in establishing a biological profile of human remains, where fragments of skull persist with unidentifiable dental arch data. Owing to the resistance and stability against external factors such as trauma and fractures, radiological assessment of the frontal sinus could be a useful indicator for sexual dimorphism.
Aim: To analyse the efficiency of morphometric assessment of the frontal sinus for gender determination in an Indian population.
Materials and method: A total of 120 (60 males and 60 females) lateral cephalograms above the age of 20 years were retrieved. The frontal sinus index (ratio of maximum height to depth) and area of the same were calculated using Adobe Photoshop software. The results obtained were subjected to statistical analysis using SPSS 19 software.
Results and conclusion: The mean average of frontal sinus height, width, index, area, and perimeter were higher in males than females, and except for index, all the parameters were found to be statistically significant (p<.05). This indicates that frontal sinus measurements on lateral cephalograms could prove to be a low-cost, user friendly system for sex determination in the Indian scenario which is more suited to the monetary constraints that often plague the disaster management bodies. Although the gender discrimination was found to be only 65% in our study, which was not very accurate, this is a pilot study and has paved a platform for studies in the future with a larger sample size which might yield more accurate results.
Keywords: Frontal sinus index, gender determination, digital evaluation, lateral cephalograms
