ASSESSMENT OF THE FRONTAL SINUS DIMENSIONS USING CBCT FOR GENDER DETERMINATION AMONG SAMPLES OF DUTCH AND TURKISH INDIVIDUALS

H. Boyacioglu, P. F. v. d. Stelt, K. Kamburoglu, D. Goksuluk, N. Avcu

Abstract: Purpose. Frontal sinus evaluation provide useful information for gender determination. Especially advanced imaging techniques offer improvements to the qualitative and quantitative morphological analysis of frontal sinus. The present study aimed to investigate the reliability of gender determination by means of frontal sinus measurements in two different population groups on CBCT scans.
Methods. The study sample consisted 97 individuals with ages ranging from 20 to 82yr, 47 of whom are Dutch individuals and 50 of whom are Turkish individuals. Measurements of length, width, height and volume of the frontal sinuses were conducted for the right and left side separately. The differences dependent on gender was calculated using logistic regression analysis.
Results. The results show that volume measurements of the right frontal sinus were statistically different between female and males (p<0.05). Gender prediction percentage accuracy for the volume measurement of right frontal sinus were 80.4 and 77,5 for Dutch and Turkish groups, respectively.
Conclusions. The results herein imply the potential use of the frontal sinus for gender determination with a reasonable accuracy in Dutch and Turkish samples. The assessment of frontal sinus as a gender indicator could make a potential contribution in addition to other gender assessment methods in forensic studies especially when only relatively small portions of the skeleton are available for analysis.
Keywords: frontal sinus, CBCT, gender determination, identification