Comparison of Frontal Sinuses for Personal Identification in 3 Populations Using Cameriere's Code Number

The identification of unknown individuals is of crucial importance to society, especially in the context of mass disasters involving individuals of different nationalities. The comparison of frontal sinus patterns is an important tool for personal identification. In Cameriere's method, a new personal code number (codC) containing 8 digits was elaborated, based on the measurements of frontal sinus patterns. The present study is an update of this previous work. Digital radiographic images of the skulls of 299 individuals of different nationalities (100 Italians, 99 Kosovars, and 100 Turks) were analyzed, adopting the same maximum-weight dependence tree used in the original work. For comparisons between groups, Fisher exact test and the χ test were carried out. The method, applied to different population groups, significantly increases the likelihood of identifying a person by comparison of antemortem and postmortem frontal sinus radiographs. Results demonstrated that the model is more discriminative in identifying individuals of different nationalities.