Sexual dimorphism of the lateral angle: Is it really applicable in forensic sex estimation?

Objective: The aim of this study was to test the validity of a previously proposed lateral angle (LA) method for sex assessment of human skeletal remains in the forensic setting.

Material And Methods: Computed tomography (CT) scans of 102 crania of Greek adults were used to test the validity of the LA method for sex estimation. The measurement procedure used in this study is a modified version of a method previously proposed by Akansel et al. (2008).

Results: Despite the LA values being larger for females, the difference was not found to be statistically significant. Sectioning point of 45° provided a low accuracy rate of 53 %.

Conclusions: The poor accuracy of the LA method obtained in this study proved it to be of no value in sex estimation. Future studies should examine a broader aspect of the petrous portion morphology in order to establish a more accurate method of forensic sex estimation.