Background: Sutural bones are supranumary bones occurring along the sutures and completely surrounded by sutures of the skull. Their number, morphology and location in skull vary in skulls. The knowledge of these bones is imperative in surgery, medicolegal cases involving child abuse or fracture of skulls and for anthropologic identification of human populations. This study was undertaken to examine incidence and pattern of distribution of sutural bones in dry skulls from Eastern India and compare the findings with similar studies across the world.Materials and Method: 180 dry crania were identified as male or female skulls and studied for the incidence and pattern of distribution of sutural bones. Also the Cephalic Index was measured for finding its correlation with the number of sutural bones appearing in a skull.Results: 124 skulls were identified as male and 56 as female skulls. Overall incidence of sutural bone occurrence was found to be 72.28% which was essentially similar across sexes. The most common sites for sutural bones, in descending order of occurrence, were found to be parieto-occipital suture, asterion, pterion and lambda. Bregma was the least common site where no sutural bone was encountered. A highly statistically significant finding was in regard to laterality of sutural bone occurrence. Sutural bones occurring along coronal, parietotemporal, parieto-mastoid, occipito-mastoid sutures and pterion exhibited more than 80% tendency towards unilateral occurrence while those occurring at asterion exhibited around 70% tendency towards unilateral occurrence. All these findings, although displayed variable degree of sexual dimorphism, were statistically insignificant for variation among sexes. No correlation between the number of sutural bones with cephalic index was found. Conclusion:The findings of this study are in agreement with the findings of many similar suitably powered studies across the world.

Background: Sutural bones are supranumary bones occurring along the sutures and completely surrounded by sutures of the skull. Their number, morphology and location vary in skulls. The knowledge of these bones is imperative in surgery, medicolegal cases involving child abuse or fracture of skulls and for anthropologic identification of human populations. The studies on sutural bones have traditionally been based on the studies of dry calvaria which are unreliable for the homogeneity of the population studied. Hence, this pilot study was undertaken to evaluate the feasibility of 3D volume rendering of CT scan data for study of sutural bones.Method: 3D volume rendering from 64-slice CT scan data from 64 patients was studied for incidence and location of occurrence of sutural bones.Results: Overall incidence of sutural bone occurrence was found to be 29.69%. The most common sites for sutural bones, in descending order of occurrence, were found to be parieto-occipital suture, asterion, and lambda. Conclusion:Sutural bone studies in concurrent populations such as this one are rare. The incidence of sutural bones in this study is similar to what another study on concurrent populations has reported. However, location of occurrence of sutural bones observed in this study was similar to all other sutural bone studies including those on dry skulls pointing to probable universality of this statistic. This preliminary study establishes the use of 3D volume rendering of CT scan data to be a valid means to acquire sutural bone data.

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