Evaluation of the accuracy of different molar teeth measurements in assessing sex.

Teeth are considered to be a very useful tissue for sex determination and molars are among the most dimorphic teeth. Even though mesiodistal (MD) and buccolingual (BL) crown diameters are usually employed for sex assessment, alternative measurements like MD and BL cervical diameters as well as crown and cervical diagonal diameters have been developed. This study explores the utility of crown and cervical MD, BL and diagonal measurements of molars in sex assessment when used separately. A total of 254 permanent molars (excluded third molars) from 101 individuals (51 males, 50 females) from the Athens Collection were examined. Stepwise discriminant analysis was used to evaluate the accuracy of each diameter group in assessing sex. It was found that the accuracy ranges from 65.5 to 88.4 %. Cervical diagonal diameters are the most accurate followed by crown diagonal diameters, and crown and cervical MD and BL diameters. Therefore the high classification accuracy of diagonal diameters show that these measurements are more reliable for sex determination than the traditional MD and BL and can be considered a promising method for sex assessment from human teeth.