The Role of Cone Beam Computed Tomography in Sex Identification of a Sample of Egyptian Population Using Maxillary Sinus Predictors

Purpose: to investigate the possibility of sex identification from radiographic maxillary sinus measurements among a sample of Egyptian population. Materials and methods: The present study comprised of 100 living non-pathological Egyptians of 200 maxillary sinuses bilaterally 50 males and 50 females aged 20-70 years. All the participants were scanned with cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) for various purposes. Maxillary sinus width, depth, bizygomatic distance and intermaxillary distance were measured from axial images and height was measured from coronal images. All measures were obtained between the widest points of all the sinuses, and volumes of maxillary sinuses on both sides were calculated using the following equation: (Width × Depth × Height × 0.5). Results: Non-statistically significant difference was revealed between the right and left maxillary sinuses. All measurement of males showed statistically significantly higher mean values than females. The significant predictors for gender were: sinus volume and inter-maxillary distance. The discriminate functions at group centroids (Group means) were 0.620 for males and -0.620 for females. Conclusion: The dimensions and volume of the maxillary sinus of male were found to be larger than those of female. Discriminant function analysis declared that maxillary sinus volume and intermaxillary distance were the best discriminant parameters for sexual dimorphism