Sex Prediction Using Finger, Hand and Foot Measurements for Forensic Identification in a Nigerian Population

Abstract

In forensics, the identification of recovered human remains is important and of great significance. Sex determination is the most important primary parameter in human identification. We investigated the predictive role of the anthropometric measurements of hand, finger and foot dimensions in sex determination. The main objective was to correlate sexual dimorphism with hand, finger and foot dimensions and determine their sectioning point(s) and also ascertain the variables which can better predict sex. A cross sectional study was carried out using 200 students from Faculty of Science, University of Lagos, Nigeria aged 16-30years. The collected data was analyzed using IBM SPSS version 23. The average hand length, breadth and index were found to be 17.44mm, 8.09mm and 0.3781mm greater in male compared to the female subjects respectively, with no significant (p<0.05) difference between the right and left hand in the same sex. The resultant hand index suggests the females have higher dolichocheir morphology compared to males and no hyperbrachycheir morphology. The cutoff point index for the right (≤43.41mm) and left (≤42.90mm) hand is suggestive of female, but is suggestive of male if the right hand is >43.41mm and left hand is >42.90mm. A foot index section points for the right (347.9mm) and left (349.4mm) foot was taken for male and female foot identification. A cut of point of 348.7mm was obtained to define sexual dimorphism of the foot index. There was strong correlation between foot dimensions of both feet for the same sex (p<0.01) while the foot dimensions of the male and the female were significantly (p<0.05) different. The hand (length and breadth), index/ring fingers ratio, foot (length and breadth) and ankle breadth are therefore important indices and forensic identification tool for predicting sexual dimorphism and identifying human remains for medicolegal examinations.

Middle Finger Length: A Predictor of Stature and Gender in a Sample of Egyptian Medical Students - Faculty of Medicine-Ain Shams University

“…Morphological gender differences in fingers length have been illustrated in different studies as in Aboul Hagag et al (2011), Habib and Kamal (2010) and Kanchan et al (2010). The mean of middle finger length in the present study was 7.66 ± 0.47 in RMF in females and 8.22 ± 0.50 in males while the mean in LMF in females was 7.68 ± 0.45 and in males was 8.30 ± 0.42 that in comparison with Iroanya et al (2020) in which the mean values were RMF 7.48±0.65 in females and 8.1 ± 0.64 in males while LMF 7.5 ± 0.67 in females and 8.17±0.67 in males and this slight variation can be attributed to influence of population and ethnic variability.…”

Classification Of Hand Images by Person, Age and Gender with The Median Robust Extended Local Binary Model

“…In this study, it is thought that the higher data and the feature extraction method used cause this high recognition rate. There are many studies for person recognition from hand vein images [36][37][38][39][40]. However, since these studies are not directly related to the present study, they have not been compared in detail.…”

The impact of age on sex bias in models for height and sex estimation based on hand and foot dimensions the impact of age on sex bias

“…An Australian study reported a sex bias of 6.9% and −19.6% for left-hand length and hand breadth respectively [ 6 ] while Ishak, Hemy [ 7 ] reported a sex bias of −4.5% and −1.1% for hand length and hand breadth respectively. Sex biases have also been shown in foot-based estimating models [ 8 , 9 ]. The directionality of sex bias is important for forensic and bioarcheological studies.…”