[Sex determination by discriminant analysis of calcaneal measurements on the lateral digital radiography].
OBJECTIVE
Five measurements of the calcaneus taken on digital radiography (DR) of adults of Han Population of Sichuan Province were selected to determine sex by multivariate discriminant analysis.


METHODS
Lateral radiographs of calcaneus taken from 393 subjects were collected. The samples were randomly divided into the experimental group (148 males and 186 females) and the examined group (26 males and 33 females). Five measurements were taken from the radiography. The analysis of variance (AVON) was carried out to determine if there was significant difference between the male and female. The discriminant functions were drawn by Fisher discriminant analysis. The effects of all obtained functions were evaluated with the examined samples.


RESULTS
There was statistically significant difference in the five measurements between the males and the females (P<0.05). Six groups of discriminant functions were obtained with an accuracy ranged from 78.4% to 88.9%. When applied on the examined samples, the sex discriminant accuracy varied from 79.7% to 86.4%.


CONCLUSIONS
These five measurements acquired from the lateral radiographs of calcaneus could be used for sex assessment during forensic identification of individuals.
Zhang
Zhao-Hui
ZH
Department of Forensic Pathology, West China College of Preclinical and Forensic Medicine, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China. lffzzh@163.com
Chen
Xiao-Gang
XG
Li
Wen-Kai
WK
Yang
Shao-Qi
SQ
Deng
Zhen-Hua
ZH
Yu
Jian-Qun
JQ
Yang
Zhi-Gang
ZG
Huang
Lin
L
D002111:Calcaneus / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D005260:Female; D018732:Forensic Anthropology / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011856:Radiographic Image Enhancement; D054881:Sex Determination by Skeleton; D055815:Young Adult