The Utilization of Frontal Sinuses in Forensics

Sa？etak Individualization of persons and human remains is one of the most common challenges forensic experts encounter during their work with cases such as mass disasters, fires and mass graves. Frontal sinuses are an anatomical structure with unique shape and dimensions that appears in almost the whole human population. They are used for personal identification when the fingerprints are not present and when the DNA analysis is impossible or financially unsuitable and time-consuming. Frontal sinuses have been in use as a mean of individualization since 1920's. Sex determination is a first step in a process of biological profiling of human remains. Studies of sexual dimorphism of frontal sinuses resultet with the percentage of reliability of sex estimation ranging from 60% to 85%. The authors explain the differences in the results by using different radiological methods for recording, sample size and population specificity. For the purposes of individualization, a number of coding systems have been developed for the classification of the shape and dimensions of the frontal sinuses, which have provided a positive individualization of mortal remains in real cases. Coding systems are based on the idea that the code combination will be unique or rare enough within the observed population. Despite the disadvantages, coding systems for frontal sinus classification are a good auxiliary method when individualizing individuals. No research on the population's specificity and the sexual dimorphism of the frontal sinuses was done on the territory of the Republic of Croatia