Age and sex estimation using fractal analysis in Brazilian adults: a discriminant analysis

Abstract

This study assessed the accuracy of fractal analysis (FA) to estimate chronological age and sex in Brazilian adults for forensic investigations. The gender-balanced sample comprised lateral cephalometric radiographs of 120 individuals, stratified according to age (20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59 years) and sex (female and male). A trained calibrated examiner measured the fractal dimension (FD) of the mandibular ramus and mandibular angle. Linear regression and multiple logistic discriminant analysis were carried out to explore the accuracy of FA. For all analyses, p-values < .05 indicated statistical significance. Overall, mean FD values were 1.49±0.10 for the mandibular ramus and 1.48±0.09 for mandibular angle. Results were more accurate in males than females for discriminating age and sex. The multiple discriminant analysis indicated that FA distinguished sex in 61.7% males and 58.3% females. In addition, the mean difference between actual and predicted value was 9.5 years and 10.1 years for men and women, respectively. Fractal analysis accurately identified sex- and age-related differences in the trabecular pattern of the mandible of Brazilian adults, confirming its utility for forensic investigations. Further studies investigating other populations are needed to assess the accuracy of FA for Forensic Dentistry.

Multifractal approach for a biological porous media: Human dentin case

“…It has been shown that real systems exhibit nonlinear behaviors (Garcia‐Ruiz et al, 2012; Meakin, 1998), examples of fields where these behaviors can be observed are: pluvimetry (García‐Marín, 2007), texture food (Serrano et al, 2019), medical signal and image analysis (Baish & Jain, 2000; dos Santos Menezes et al, 2021; Hua et al, 2009; Jud et al, 2016; Lopes & Betrouni, 2009; N'Diaye et al, 2013; Reishofer et al, 2018; Silvetti & Delrieux, 2010), and porous media (Ehlers & Wagner, 2019; Jiang & Tchelepi, 2019; Shen et al, 2018) the latest one is of our interest. Actually, scientific communications on porous systems cover multiple disciplines of science and engineering, some examples are: materials science and fluid dynamics (Calvo‐Guirado et al, 2019; Ehlers & Wagner, 2019; Hosseinikhah et al, 2020) thermodynamics (Alizadeh et al, 2021; Sheikholeslami et al, 2019) and biological systems (Khazayinejad et al, 2021; Kosari & Vafai, 2021), for instance; bones (Alves et al, 2017; Borowska et al, 2015; Camargo et al, 2016; Harrar et al, 2011; Hua et al, 2009; Koh et al, 2012; Sanchez‐Molina et al, 2013; Xiao et al, 2020; Zehani et al, 2016) and teeth (Nezafat et al, 2019; Solaymani et al, 2018, 2020)—on which we focus on.…”