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The application of traditional and geometric morphometric analyses for forensic quantification of sexual dimorphism: preliminary investigations in a Western Australian population

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Abstract

A current limitation of forensic practice in Western Australia is a lack of contemporary population-specific standards for biological profiling; this directly relates to the unavailability of documented human skeletal collections. With rapidly advancing technology, however, it is now possible to acquire accurate skeletal measurements from 3D scans contained in medical databases. The purpose of the present study, therefore, is to explore the accuracy of using cranial form to predict sex in adult Australians. Both traditional and geometric morphometric methods are applied to data derived from 3D landmarks acquired in CT-reconstructed crania. The sample comprises multi-detector computed tomography scans of 200 adult individuals; following 3D volume rendering, 46 anatomical landmarks are acquired using OsiriX (version 3.9). Centroid size and shape (first 20 PCs of the Procrustes coordinates) and the inter-landmark (ILD) distances between all possible pairs of landmarks are then calculated. Sex classification effectiveness of the 3D multivariate descriptors of size and shape and selected ILD measurements are assessed and compared; robustness of findings is explored using resampling statistics. Cranial shape and size and the ILD measurements are sexually dimorphic and explain 3.2 to 54.3 % of sample variance; sex classification accuracy is 83.5–88.0 %. Sex estimation using 3D shape appears to have some advantages compared to approaches using size measurements. We have, however, identified a simple and biologically meaningful single non-traditional linear measurement (glabella–zygion) that classifies Western Australian individuals according to sex with a high degree of expected accuracy (87.5–88 %).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank A/Prof. Rob Hart, Frontier Medical Imaging International, Western Australia, for assistance with obtaining and interpreting the CT scans. We also thank Dr. Paul Sanfilippo, University of Melbourne, for assistance with statistical applications and interpretations. The authors also thank the reviewers and editor for their helpful comments. Funding is provided by ARC Discovery Grant (DP1092538).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Forensic Science, The University of Western Australia, M420, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, 6009, Australia

    Daniel Franklin, Andrea Cardini, Ambika Flavel & Algis Kuliukas

  2. Dipartimento di Biologia, Universitá di Modena e Reggio Emilia, via Campi 213, 41100, Modena, Italy

    Andrea Cardini

  3. Centre for Anatomical and Human Sciences, The Hull York Medical School, Heslington, York, Y010 5DD, UK

    Andrea Cardini

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  1. Daniel Franklin
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  2. Andrea Cardini
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  3. Ambika Flavel
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  4. Algis Kuliukas
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Correspondence to Daniel Franklin.

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Franklin, D., Cardini, A., Flavel, A. et al. The application of traditional and geometric morphometric analyses for forensic quantification of sexual dimorphism: preliminary investigations in a Western Australian population. Int J Legal Med 126, 549–558 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-012-0684-8

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