Morphological Study of Lip Print Pattern among Medical Students: An Anthropological Study

Similar to finger prints, appearance of lip prints are heritable and individualistic. Forensic researchers are giving more attention towards studying lip prints (Chieloscopy) which is helping them to solve many of crime and legal related cases. The present study was carried out in the Department of Forensic Medicine, Navodaya Medical College, Raichur, to evaluate different pattern of lip prints in all 4 quadrants of lip, among students of our college. A total of 100 students (50 Males and 50 Females) were taken as study subjects. Suzuki and Tsuchihashi classification was used to classify different types of grooves in lips and the results were statistically analysed and tabulated. No identically similar lip print pattern was noticed among study subjects. Type I pattern was most common among males in all four quadrants (28.7%) fallowed by Type III (27.7%). Further in males Type I was prominently seen in upper right quadrant (38%) and lower left quadrant (21.8%) and Type III in upper left (28.2%) and lower right (31%). Similarly females too showed Type I pattern as commonest one (34%) in all quadrants. Further in females Type I pattern was more frequently seen in lower left quadrant (37%) fallowed by upper right quadrant (34.6%). Lower right and upper left quadrant had Type I pattern of 33% each.