Keywords:
Forensics, Medico-legal issues, Experimental investigations, CT, Extremities, Bones
Authors:
F. Giurazza1, R. Del Vescovo2, R. L. Cazzato1, S. battisti3, F. D'Agostino4, R. F. Grasso4, B. Beomonte Zobel4; 1Rome/IT, 2Marino (RM)/IT, 3Tivoli/IT, 4Roma/IT
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2012/C-0142
Purpose
Together with sex,
age and race,
height is one of the biological characteristics that can be evaluated from the skeleton,
even many years after death.
For this reason stature determination represents one of the most important features in anthropometric and medical investigations.
Stature has a biological proportional correlation with other parts of the human body (head,
trunk,
arms); this helps the forensic scientist to establish height on the basis of skeletal remains.
The aim of this preliminary in vivo study was to look for a correlation between height and femur/skull measurements using Computed Tomography (CT) scans,
and to derive regression equations for the estimation of total skeletal height in a Caucasian population.
In addition we compared the correlation of stature with femur and skull measurements in the same population,
to identify which bone correlates best with stature.