Radiomorphometric analysis of the clivus – A soothsayer of age and gender

Abstract

Purpose: Skull is the most studied skeletal remaining as enamel and bones are the last ones to disintegrate after death. The clivus is one such dense part of the skull base and most of the time it is recovered intact from a damaged or incinerated skull and can be used as an indicator in identification. The present study is aimed to perform a radiomorphometric analysis of the clivus using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) and to assess its pertinence in age and gender estimation. Materials and Methods: The CBCT images of 254 (162 males, 92 females) subjects were obtained from New tom Giano HR (QR SRL Company, Verona, Italy) CBCT machine at 90 kVp, 6 mA for 7.2 s at the field of view (16 × 18), voxel size of 300 in the age group of 6–70 years were chosen. The clivus widths and lengths were measured using NNT software programs on axial and sagittal reconstructed images. Results: Mean clivus lengths and widths were significantly different in male and female patients. Bivariate correlations showed that there was a stronger association of the clivus lengths and widths to age when considered a linear combination as opposed to when taken individually in both female and male patients. Association between the linear combination of the clivus lengths and widths with age was found to be the highest in female patients among all the results (R = 0.553). All the above results were statistically significant (P < 0.05). Conclusion: CBCT measurements of clivus dimensions can be used reliably for anthropometric analysis as they are precisely associated with age and gender. Hence, it can be concluded that these dimensions can be used as a supplementary or only parameter when other parameters are uneventful in medicolegal cases.