A Digital Radiographic Study for Gender Prediction Using Mandibular Indices

Human identification is the goal of forensic dentistry and dental records, importantly the radiographic images like the orthopantomographs and intra oral radiographs form the basis to identify people. In this paper we attempt to set forth the foundations of a biometric system to compare and evaluate various measurements of mandibular ramus, mental index and their relationship to sex and also the usefulness of these parameters in sex determination. The Radiographs were taken by Kodak 8000C Digital Panoramic and Cephalometric System (73 kVp, 12 mA, 13.9 s) and mandibular ramus measurements carried out using 3.0 software. Initial experimental results on a small database of radiographs indicate that matching dental images based on mandibular ramus and mental indices and their relative positions is a feasible method for forensic analysis of human gender.