Medico-Legal Update

  • Year: 2019
  • Volume: 19
  • Issue: 2

Facial Width and Inter-Pupillary Distance-A Useful Tool for Superimposition Technique

  • Author:
  • Rattan Singh1, Atal Devinder2,, Angrish Shreya3, Kala Shivang3, Mittal Shivang3, Singh Shravi3, Sharda Shreshtha3
  • Total Page Count: 4
  • Page Number: 34 to 37

1Assistant Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences, Jolly Grant, Dehradun, Uttarakhand

2Associate Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, Shaheed Hasan Khan Mewati Government Medical College, Mewat, Nalhar, Haryana

3MBBS Students, Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences, Jolly Grant, Dehradun, Uttarakhand

*Corresponding Author: Dr. Devinder Kumar Atal, Associate Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, Shaheed Hasan Khan Mewati Government Medical College, Mewat, Nalhar, Haryana, 122107, Ph: 7579067784, E-mail: devinder.atal@gmail.com

Online published on 8 August, 2019.

Abstract

Craniofacial superimposition technique was used for identification, when a skull of a missing person is recovered, by comparing with ante-mortem photographs or video. Parameters like inter-pupillary distance and bizyomatic width/facial width of the human face are used in the superimposition technique in order to identify a missing person. The study was conducted to find out the mean facial width and mean inter pupillary distance separately in both males & females and correlation between these parameters. This study was conducted in 100 healthy subjects (50 males & 50 females) in the age group of 19 to 22 years at the Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences, Uttarakhand. Interpupillary distance (IPD) and facial width (FW) were measured by means of vernier callipers. The data was compiled and analyzed by computer software SPSS version 20. Among the females, descriptive analysis of quantitative data showed that the mean IPD was 4.8272 ±.37395, mean FW was 12.4240 ±.69151 and Pearson Correlation coefficient was 0.168. Among the males, mean IPD was found out to be 5.9365 ± 0.37072, mean FW was 16.8290 ± 1.11108 and Pearson Correlation coefficient was 0.216. The mean value of both, IPD and FW were higher in males as compared to females.

A weak correlation was found in both sexes and no statistically significant correlation was found in face width and Interpupillary distance in both males and females as the p value for male was 0.133 and for female it was 0.245.

Keywords

Anthropometry, Interpupillary distance, Facial width, Vernier calliper, Superimposition technique