Background and Aims: Gender determination is an important step in identification. For gender determination, anthropometric evaluation is one of the main forensic evaluations. The aim of this study was the assessment of sphenoid sinus volume in order to determine sexual identity, using multi-slice CT images.
Materials and Methods: For volumetric analysis, axial paranasal sinus CT scan with 3-mm slice thickness was used. For this study, 80 images (40 women and 40 men older than 18 years) were selected. For the assessment of sphenoid sinus volume, Digimizer software was used. The volume of sphenoid sinus was calculated using the following equation: v=∑ (area of each slice × thickness of each slice). Statistical analysis was performed by independent T-test.
Results: The mean volume of sphenoid sinus was significantly greater in male gender (P=0.01).The assessed Cut off point was 9/35 cm3, showing that 63.4% of volume assessments greater than cut off point was supposed to be male and 64.1% of volumetry lesser than cut off point were female.
Conclusion: According to the area under Roc curve (1.65%), sphenoid sinus volume is not an appropriate factor for differentiation of male and female from each other, which means the predictability of cut off point (9/35 cm3 ) is 65/1% close to reality.
