Classification system of frontal sinus patterns by radiography. Its application to identification of unknown skeletal remains

Usability of CT Images of Frontal Sinus in Forensic Personal Identification

“…According to classical knowledge based on x-rays, frontal sinus is not apparent at birth and development begins during the second year of life (Yoshino et al, 1987;Quatrehomme et al, 1996;Kirk et al, 2002). However, CT studies show that frontal sinus begins development in the region of frontal recess of the frontal nasal meatus in a fetus aging 4th months of gestation.…”

“…Among radiographs used for forensic personal identification, there were several parts of skull (Bodey et al, 2003;Teke et al, 2007), ribs (Rejtarová et al, 2004), hip (Varga & Takács, 1991), dental, chest and abdominal areas (Kahana & Hiss, 1999). Identification of human remains by comparison of antemortem and postmortem radiographs of frontal sinuses is a well established procedure among forensic scientists and even some of the authors claim to use them as a substitute for fingerprints and frontal sinuses in particular have always been assumed to be different in every person (Yoshino et al, 1987;Harris et al, 1987;Kullman et al, 1990). Computerized tomography is an advanced and new technique and in literature there are only a few reports on identification of unknown bodies using CT scans of frontal sinus (Reichs, 1993;Riepert et al, 2001;Tatlisumak et al, 2007;Pfaeffli et al, 2007;Blau et al, 2008;Uthman et al, 2010).…”

“…The sinus invades the frontal bone by about 5 years of age and slowly grows to reach an adult size in late adolescence (Miller & Amedee, 1998). Whilst it is widely accepted that the development of the frontal sinus is complete by about 20 years of age and remains stable until further enlargement of the chambers can occur from bone resorption during the advanced ages (Yoshino et al, 1987;Quatrehomme et al, 1996;Kirk et al, 2002); Tatlisumak et al, reported that, the highest values of measurements of frontal sinus were at the 31-40 age group in both sexes and there were a tendency to decrease with aging (Tatlisumak et al, 2008). Also, McLaughlin et al, suggested that the frontal sinus continued to expand until the age of 40 years because of mechanical stresses of mastication and growth hormone levels (McLaughlin et al, 2001).…”

“…The structure of frontal sinus can be variable from person to person and its sizes might be different in different populations (Miller & Amedee, 1998;Tatlisumak et al, 2008). Yoshino et al described 20,000 types of frontal sinus (Yoshino et al, 1987). Although, Miller and Amedee reported that height of frontal sinus was between 5 and 66 mm, and its width between 17 and 49 mm (Miller & Amedee, 1998); the maximum and minimum sizes of frontal sinus were defined variable by several scientists in several populations.…”

“…Firstly, it presents highly variable nature and shows variation even among the monozygotic twins (Yoshino et al, 1987;Quatrehomme et al, 1996;Cox et al, 2009). This empirically accepted variability was proven (Christensen, 2005).…”