Sex estimation with the total area of the proximal femur: A densitometric approach.
The estimation of sex is a central step to establish the biological profile of an anonymous skeletal individual. Imaging techniques, including bone densitometry, have been used to evaluate sex in remains incompletely skeletonized. In this paper, we present a technique for sex estimation using the total area (TA) of the proximal femur, a two-dimensional areal measurement determined through densitometry. TA was acquired from a training sample (112 females; 112 males) from the Coimbra Identified Skeletal Collection (University of Coimbra, Portugal). Logistic regression (LR), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), reduce error pruning trees (REPTree), and classification and regression trees (CART) were employed in order to obtain models that could predict sex in unidentified skeletal remains. Under cross-validation, the proposed models correctly estimated sex in 90.2-92.0% of cases (bias ranging from 1.8% to 4.5%). The models were evaluated in an independent test sample (30 females; 30 males) from the 21st Century Identified Skeletal Collection (University of Coimbra, Portugal), with a sex allocation accuracy ranging from 90.0% to 91.7% (bias from 3.3% to 10.0%). Overall, data mining classifiers, especially the REPTree, performed better than the traditional classifiers (LR and LDA), maximizing overall accuracy and minimizing bias. This study emphasizes the significant value of bone densitometry to estimate sex in cadaveric remains in diverse states of preservation and completeness, even human remains with soft tissues.
Research Centre for Anthropology and Health, Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal; Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology, Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal; Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behavior, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal. Electronic address: fcurate@uc.pt.
Francisco
F
Curate
The Coimbra Hospital and University Centre, Coimbra, Portugal.
Anabela
A
Albuquerque
The Coimbra Hospital and University Centre, Coimbra, Portugal.
Izilda
I
Ferreira
Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology, Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal; Centre for Functional Ecology, Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal.
Eugénia
E
Cunha
D015502:Absorptiometry, Photon; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003663:Decision Trees; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D005260:Female; D005269:Femur / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D018732:Forensic Anthropology / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015233:Models, Statistical; D054881:Sex Determination by Skeleton / Q000379:methods*
Biological profile; Bone densitometry; Forensic anthropology population data; Human identification; Sex diagnosis