Sex Determination from Anthropological Measurements of Thyroid Cartilage in the Population of Punjab

Abstract

In the era of nanotechnology, with the advancement of scientific technologies, the extraordinary  task of establishing identity of an individual has been simplified in the developed countries. However the  application of such modern technologies in developing countries is still a distant dream owing to its  affordability. In such countries, anthropometric analysis for the identification of unknown bodies is  comparatively fruitful and cost effective. The aim of this study was to correlate the anthropological  measurements of the thyroid cartilage with the sex of the individual. Thyroid cartilages from 300 cases of  Punjab population were studied. A total of seventeen parameters were measured in each thyroid cartilage  and the observations were compared between both sexes. Significant difference between two groups was  found only in six variables (length of right and left thyroid lamina, breadth of right and left thyroid lamina,  ventral thyroid height and angle between thyroid laminae). Discriminant function equation for  determination of sex with group centroid value for each gender group was obtained. The measurements  were again cross validated with the obtained discriminant function equation and further classified into  male and female groups with a success rate of 92.3%.