Morphometric Assessment of Western Indian Crania by discriminant function analysis

Abstract

Background: Craniometric measurements are used in anatomy, anthropology bioarchaeology, forensic medicine, neurosurgery, maxillofacial surgery and plastic surgery. Despite the fact that sex determination using craniometric traits is commonly used worldwide, very few studies are noted in Western Indian region which fill up the gaps existing in local forensic literature. Objectives: The purpose of this study is to evaluate sexual dimorphism in the cranium and to develop a population specific discriminant function equations that can be applied in sex determination from cranium during personal identification. Material and Methods: This study was conducted on 136 adult crania of known sex (102 male and 34 female) available in Anatomy departments of M P Shah Government Medical College, Jamnagar and other medical colleges across Gujarat. Five cranial parameters were measured and analyzed using both univariate and multivariate discriminant function analysis. Results: Males are statistically significantly greater than females in all dimensions with p value < 0.001. Maximum cranial length provide an accuracy rate of 83.8% on average by univariate discriminant analysis. By multivariate analysis accuracy is raised up to 88.2%. Conclusion: Sexual dimorphism in Western Indians is well reflected in cranial measurements. Mutivarite analysis give the highest classification accuracy and maximum cranial length is most dimorphic variable in univariate analysis. The study derived population specific discriminant equations for sex determination from crania of Western Indian population.