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In the last decade, the advances in imaging technologies have intensified the use of multislice computed tomography (MSCT) for anthropological purposes. The published literature has proved it to be a suitable tool for establishing sexually dimorphic characteristics in different anatomical areas. In this context, the main purpose of the present study was to explore the accuracy of traditional morphometric method when applied to data acquired in three-dimensional (3D) reconstructed os coxae of living Spanish population, to develop a series of statistically robust patterns for sex assessment and to test their validity in innominate remains. For this purpose, 150 volume-rendered innominate CT scans were selected to examine nine interlandmark linear distances by means of descriptive statistics and discriminant function analyses (DFA) employing the jackknife procedure for cross-validations. Five measurements were sexually dimorphic. Acetabular diameter was the single most accurate predictor. This, combined with innominate height and innominate breadth, contributed very significantly to sex estimation. Overall, classification accuracies were 89.3-95.3 % (89.3-94.7 % after cross-validation), with a sex-bias lower than 5 %. The second validation approach performed on a sample of 96 individuals from another contemporary Spanish reference collection comprising dry bones showed the high percentage of accurate classification (83.3-95.8 %). In conclusion, the assessment of sex using cross-sectional MSCT images of the os coxae is possible and the discriminant functions obtained on Spanish living individuals can also be effective for estimating sex from skeletal remains.

The current study was undertaken to test the validity and reproducibility of the Purkait triangle method and some alternative proposals for sex prediction from the proximal femur in the adult population of Spain. To that end, sexual dimorphism of the maximum femoral head diameter and the minimum femoral neck diameter were also evaluated. The study was conducted on 186 femora (109 males and 77 females) taken from the San José collection of identified individuals (Southern Spain). Discriminant function analyses (DFA) employing the jackknife procedure for cross-validations were considered. Overall, more than 94% of individuals of both sexes were correctly classified. The most dimorphic single variable from the triangle method was the intertrochanteric apex distance (BC) that reached 85.5% accuracy, falling below those obtained for the femoral head and femoral neck diameter, respectively, (89.8 and 91.9%). Combining BC with the neck diameter, the predictive ability increased to 92.5%; when femoral head diameter was added to the latter two, the classification success rate improved further up to 94.6% (94.1% after cross-validation). We conclude that the classification success rates of the Purkait's method remained considerably below any of those obtained with the models proposed in the present study which proved to be a much better and more reliable choice both as single predictors and in combination with other variables.

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Background/Aim. The studies published in recent years have shown that the linear measurements on the three-dimensional computed tomography (3D-CT) clinical images of the hip bone, skull or breastbone can serve as a reliable alternative method for sex estimation. In spite of the fact that the proximal femur exhibited high dimorphism when examining the skeletal material, there is still a lack of morphometric studies dealing with the CT imaging of this anatomical region that would confirm the relevance of the previously obtained results. The aim of this study was to validate the reliability and precision of some proximal femur measurements obtained in vivo from the 3D-CT models and to compare the accuracies of our findings with those formerly reported by other relevant research. Methods. A total of 146 CT scans (73 male and 73 females) were selected to take 6 measurements using the traditional osteometric methods. The 3D reconstruction was done at 1mm and 1.25 mm thick slices with OsiriX (v.4.1). The univariate and multivariate discriminant functions (DFs) were formulated for assessing sex. Results. The vertical diameter of neck and the vertical diameter of head were found to contribute the most when considered independently (90.4%-91.8%). When combining these with the other dimensions, the prediction accuracy increased up to 97.3%. The accuracy of CT measurements is in accordance with those obtained in the traditional morphometric studies on the skeletonized femurs of contemporary populations. The 3D-CT approach showed remarkably higher percentage of predictive ability in comparison with the 2D technique. Conclusion. 3D-CT is a suitable tool for the objective quantification of osteological data. The medical scans and measurements on living individuals offer a valuable source of data from which the highly reliable skeletal standards can be developed for estimating sex, even from the fragmented remains. The method proposed here can be highly useful especially in the identification of mass disaster victims when the direct osteometry is difficult to apply and maceration of the remains is not an option.