Consideration of Accuracy and Observational Error Analysis in Pelvic Sex Assessment: A Study in a Thai Cadaveric Human Population

Abstract

Objective: In situations where skeletal human remains are recovered, pelvic bone morphology has been demonstrated to have an essential role in forensic sex identification. Determination of sex is one of the four pillars used to construct a biological profile of unidentified skeletal remains. Such analysis has mainly been confined to direct visual inspection or morphometric analysis of pelvic elements available. This study evaluates the identification accuracy and classification error established based on a morphometric sex determination of this bone either by direct observation or digital image analysis. Materials and Methods: We used morphometric analysis of human pelvic bone from modern Thai samples to clarify the effect of variation in pelvic morphometric parameters on prediction accuracy. A total number of 408 pelvic bones (Male, n=249 and Female, n=159) were examined. Pelvic morphometric variables were measured in multiple regions for each bone. Results: We found statistically significant differences in the pelvic morphometric parameters measured between the two sexes with considerably accurate classification and unavoidable errors by all means of analytical assessment. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that it is not only variation of pelvic morphometric parameters between the two sexes in this population, but also the selection of analytical approach that can impact prediction accuracy and thus may contribute to the effect on the determination of sex. Ethical approval was not required for this study.

Keywords

• Morphometric analysis
• forensic anthropology
• sex estimation
• technical error of measurement