OSTEOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF PATELLA FOR SEXUAL DIMORPHISM

Dr. Kamal Singla*, Dr. Sunil Kumar Duchania, Dr. S. K. Dhattarwal and Dr. Yashoda Rani

ABSTRACT

Identification is the act of establishing the identity. The establishment of identity may be required upon in cases of fresh corpses, decomposed corpses, mutilated, dismembered corpses and skeletonised material. The pelvic bone and skull are the first choices for morphological sexing if not recovered in fragmentary states. If pelvic bones and skull are recovered in a fragmentary state, other bones such as the patella can be used for sex determination from osteometric analysis. The present study shows that there are definite sexual osteometric differences between male and female patella bones from the population of Haryana. For both sides, MAXH had the maximum AUC (0.971 for right and 0.980 for left side), thus indicating it can be used for differentiation between males and females. For right and left sides, the projected sensitivity of MAXH was 97% and 98% respectively and projected specificity was 89.1% and 85.6% respectively. These findings implied that single value of patella parameters can be used for differentiation in gender. Using these techniques, the determination of sex can be accomplished by comparing the dimension of unknown patella bone with the cut off value for the population of Haryana. The present study produced standard for sex determination from patella. Therefore, these new standard will be useful for forensic experts.

Keywords: MAXH, MAXB, MAXT.