Identification of human sex from hyoid bone using thoracic computed tomography (CT) Images (a cross-sectional study) .

Abstract

Background: Sex determination of the individual plays a vital role in establishing the identity of remains by anthropologist. The characterization of hyoid bone is made possible by analysing sexually dimorphic features, enabling it to occasionally be utilized in the sex determination part of establishing the parameters of biological profile in skeletal remains. Hyoid bone is basically the key bone in forensic investigation of neck trauma (as strangulation). This study aims at evaluating the application of the hyoid bone metric measurements and hyoid bone density to identify sex in Egyptian population using two-dimensional computed tomography (CT) images methodology. Patients and methods: This is a cross-sectional study that was done on thoracic Computed Tomography (CT) of 103 general Egyptian population constituting of 54 males and 49 females. The statistics against following parameters were noted from each patient: Bone density in Hounsfield unite by CT (HU), the distance between bilateral greater horns (GH), the distance between bilateral lesser horns (LH), Distance from most anterior end of hyoid arch to great horns (AP) . Results: As per the statistics, it is evident that the hyoid bone density (HU) among males was significantly higher than females. This fact stood among all age groups of males and females. Another important observation is that this difference was statistically significant among children and young adults of both genders. Also, GH was significantly higher in males of young adult age group and middle age group. But in the case of AP, it was significantly higher in female child compared with male child age group. The calculated accuracy (AUC) of HU (bone density) appeared to be 0.70 which was remarkably the most accurate hyoid bone parameter for sex detection (P value 0.001) as compared with the accuracy of other metric parameters (GH 0.60, LH 0.51 and AP 0.55). Conclusion: These results stipulate that the hyoid bone density (HU) own a high degree of accuracy and can use well established characteristics to determine the sex. KEY WORDS: Bone density, , Forensic investigation, Hyoid bone, Sex estimation.