Kafatası Kalınlığı Ölçümlerinin Tarihsel Gelişimi ve Bu Ölçümlerin Adli Tıpta Kullanılabilirliği: Geleneksel Bir Literatür Taraması

Abstract

For approximately 2 centuries, the estimation of ancestry, sex, and age from skull measurements has been one of the issues of anthropology. Since the first studies of skull thickness in 1879, measurements were first made with calipers, and then with technological developments over time are also now made with X-rays, computed tomography examinations, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging. Skull thickness was used for several clinical purposes in medicine, such as determining the most suitable area for bone grafts, deciding on the appropriate area in the temporal bone for hearing aid application, monitoring changes in bone thickness in various diseases and treatments, etc. It has also been used for forensic identification, and to explain the mechanism of skull fractures in forensic medicine, although it was described in a limited number of articles. The aim of this study is to make a detailed literature review of the historical development of skull thickness measurement techniques, including the use of skull thickness measurements in forensic identification and skull fracture mechanism. It can be foreseen that skull thickness will be an indispensable part of forensic identification, especially in skeletons, together with the mapping method, an example of which has been carried out. Likewise, there is no doubt that measuring the thickness of the regions where the fracture lines pass in the skulls and the bone density of these regions by scintigraphy and combining them with the 3D Finite Element Model will lead to new ideas about the mechanism of fracture formation.