Petaros Anja, Sholts Sabrina B, Čavka Mislav, Šlaus Mario, Wärmländer Sebastian K T S
Department of Forensic Medicine, National Board of Forensic Medicine, Artillerigatan 12, 587 58 Linköping, Sweden.
Department of Forensic Medicine and Criminalistics, Rijeka University, School of Medicine, 51 000 Rijeka, Croatia.
Homo. 2021 Jun 25;72(2):113-127. doi: 10.1127/homo/2021/1243.
3D analysis of skeletal volumes has become an important field in digital anthropology studies. The volume of the mastoid process has been proposed to display significant sexual dimorphism, but it has a complex shape and to date no study has quantified the full mastoid volume for sex estimation purposes. In this study we compared three different ways to isolate the volume of the mastoid process from digital 3D models of dry crania, and then evaluated the performance of the three different volume definitions for sex estimation purposes. A total of 170 crania (86 male, 84 females) excavated from five medieval Croatian sites were CT-scanned and used to produce 3D stereolitographic models. The three different isolation techniques were based on various anatomical landmarks and planes, as well as the anatomy of the mastoid process itself. Measurements of the three different mastoid volumes yielded different accuracies and precisions. Interestingly, anatomical structures were sometimes more useful than classical landmarks as demarcators of mastoid volume. For all three volume definitions, male mastoid volumes were significantly larger than female volumes, in both relative and absolute numbers. Sex estimation based on mastoid volume showed a slightly higher precision and better accuracy (71% correct classifications) than visual scoring techniques (67%) and linear distance measurements (69%) of the mastoid process. Sex estimation based on cranial size performed even better (78%), and multifactorial analysis (cranium size + mastoid volume) reached up to 81% accuracy. These results show that measurements of the mastoid volume represent a promising metric to be used in multifactorial approaches for sex estimation of human remains.
骨骼体积的三维分析已成为数字人类学研究中的一个重要领域。乳突的体积被认为具有显著的性别二态性，但其形状复杂，迄今为止尚无研究为性别估计目的对整个乳突体积进行量化。在本研究中，我们比较了从干燥颅骨的数字三维模型中分离乳突体积的三种不同方法，然后评估了这三种不同体积定义用于性别估计的性能。从克罗地亚五个中世纪遗址发掘出的总共170具颅骨（86例男性，84例女性）进行了CT扫描，并用于制作三维立体光刻模型。这三种不同的分离技术基于各种解剖标志和平面，以及乳突本身的解剖结构。对三种不同乳突体积的测量产生了不同的准确度和精密度。有趣的是，作为乳突体积的划分标志，解剖结构有时比经典标志更有用。对于所有三种体积定义，无论相对数量还是绝对数量，男性乳突体积均显著大于女性体积。基于乳突体积的性别估计显示出比乳突过程的视觉评分技术（67%）和线性距离测量（69%）略高的精密度和更好的准确度（71%正确分类）。基于颅骨大小的性别估计表现更好（78%），多因素分析（颅骨大小+乳突体积）的准确度高达81%。这些结果表明，乳突体积测量是一种有前景的指标，可用于多因素方法中对人类遗骸进行性别估计。
