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Craniofacial identification is a technique for prediction and recreation of life-like appearances of an individual, recreated onto an unknown skull on the basis of intricate relationship existing between underlying bony contour and the overlying soft tissues, muscles and skin. Tissue thicknesses in different population have wide variations due to disparities in nutritional, environmental or genetical factors. The physical health, nutritional status and disease activity of an individual have significant and detectable influences on both the complex anatomy of facial skeleton as well as soft tissue depths. Present study was conducted on 50 MRI and 53 CT normal scans of 64 male and 39 female Northwest Indian adult subjects who reported to radio-imaging diagnostic centres for some clinical and therapeutic reasons. Soft-tissue thickness was estimated at 33 craniofacial landmarks on both MRI and CT scans using OsiriX v 6.0.2 64 bit software and Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) format images. MRI scans were found comparatively better and more reliable mean of estimating tissue depths and for sex estimations. Statistically significant sex differences were noticed in tissue depths at various craniofacial landmarks. The endocanthion was found the best sex discriminating variable from both types of scans. MRI and CT scan estimated tissue thicknesses could identify sex of 96% and 85%, subjects, respectively. Secular increase in tissue depths was observed to support the increased trend of obesity in present day population of the area when compared with similar studies conducted few decades earlier. Present study results can be a valuable adjunct for forensic anthropological facial reconstructions and experts of diverse medical disciplines.

INTRODUCTIONThe entire world is at the risk of various dreadful diseases and cancer is one of them. Millions of people die every year from cancer only which constitutes 13% of total deaths occurring worldwide from different reasons.1 Most of the victims seek medical interventions at advanced stage of breast cancer due to lack of awareness about its risk factors, symptoms, early detection methods and treatment. Breast cancer is one of the most common types of cancers which affects individuals of all ethnic groups at different levels of modernization; thus engulfing lives of hundreds of thousands of women every year. Like other malignancies, breast cancer victims continue to live ABSTRACT Background: The entire world is at the risk of various dreadful diseases and cancer is one of them. Most of the victims seek medical interventions at advanced stage of breast cancer due to lack of awareness about its risk factors, symptoms, early detection methods and treatment. Present study was conducted to assess the knowledge levels, beliefs and the practices about breast cancer among both rural and urban women of Gurdaspur (Punjab) in an attempt to spread awareness and remove the fear of an unwarranted trauma among target population. Methods: Data was generated by interviewing 300 Gurdaspur (Punjab) women (20-40 years) through a pre-structured questionnaire designed to collect information about their knowledge of breast cancer, its causative factors, screening methods, treatments and beliefs. Results: Mean age of the participants was 41±5 years. More than 80% women had heard about breast cancer from family members or friends. About 70% women had knowledge about symptoms of this traumatic disease and more than half of them had heard about the practice of breast self-examination, though only 8.9% urban and 5.2% rural women had ever practiced it. Awareness of breast cancer was found significantly associated with age, marital status, educational level and socioeconomic status of the woman. Conclusions: Participants had a very limited knowledge about symptoms, screening procedure, risk factors, treatment of breast cancer etc. Some public health intervention and evaluation programs are urgently required to educate women about early detection and treatment strategies of breast cancer to reduce mortality from this disease.

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