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Paranasal sinuses represent one of the most individualizing structures of the human body and some of them have been already analyzed for possible applications to personal identification, such as the frontal and sphenoid sinuses. This study explores the application of 3D–3D superimposition to maxillary sinuses in personal identification. One hundred head CT-scans of adult subjects (equally divided among males and females) were extracted from a hospital database. Maxillary sinuses were segmented twice from each subject through ITK-SNAP software and the correspondent 3D models were automatically superimposed to obtain 100 matches (when they belonged to the same person) and 100 mismatches (when they were extracted from different individuals), both from the right and left side. Average RMS (root mean square) point-to-point distance was then calculated for all the superimpositions; differences according to sex, side, and group (matches and mismatches) were assessed through three-way ANOVA test (p < 0.017). On average, RMS values were lower in matches (0.26 ± 0.19 mm in males, 0.24 ± 0.18 mm in females) than in mismatches (2.44 ± 0.87 mm in males, 2.20 ± 0.73 mm in females) with a significant difference (p < 0.001). No significant differences were found according to sex or side (p > 0.017). The study verified the potential of maxillary sinuses as reliable anatomical structures for personal identification in the forensic context.

Structural violence is an indirect form of violence that can lead to physiological consequences. Interestingly, these physiological disruptions may affect the skeletons and can therefore provide relevant information on violence and way of life in the analysis of skeletal remains. The aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that migrants who died in the Mediterranean Sea would present physiological cranial stress markers such as cribra orbitalia (CO), porotic hyperostosis (PH), and linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) more frequently and more severely than Italians of the 20th century. With this intent, a total of 164 crania were examined: 139 from deceased migrants recovered from a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015, aged between 16 and 35 years old, and 25 of the same age from the CAL Milano Cemetery Skeletal Collection. Both presence and severity of CO, PH, and LEH were evaluated. The data obtained were analyzed using Wilcoxon signed-rank and independence Chi-squared tests to compare the results between the two samples and to test whether there was an association between the sample of migrants and the occurrence of lesions. As a result, CO and PH appeared more frequently and more severely in the migrant sample. In addition, migrants were significantly associated with CO, PH, and LEH (p-values < 0.05). Although this does not imply in any way that CO, PH, and LEH are specific to migration, they should be regarded as indicators of structural violence.

Virtual anthropology (VA) has recently produced an additional tool for the analysis of commingled remains and is based on the distance analysis between three-dimensional (3D) models of bones. To date, the pair-matching of the innominate bone through a 3D approach remains partially unexplored. Here, 44 abdominal CT scans (22 males and 22 females) were selected from a hospital database, and the pubic bones were segmented through ITK-SNAP software. The models were hollowed with Viewbox4 to minimize the amount of trabecular bone. The left pubic bones were mirrored and superimposed on the right ones, according to the smallest point-to-point difference between the two surfaces through VAM software. RMS distances between models were calculated through VAM, producing RMS values for 20 matches and 420 mismatches for each sex group. Differences in RMS distance values between matches and mismatches were investigated through Mann–Whitney tests (p < 0.05); the repeatability of the procedure was assessed through absolute and relative technical error measurement (TEM and rTEM). RMS distance values of matches and mismatches were significantly different (p < 0.01) in both groups. The method yielded optimal results with high sensitivity (100.0%) and specificity (99.8% in males, 98.8% in females) rates according to the chosen threshold. This project contributes to the research field of VA with a valuable adjunct that may bolster and strengthen the results of the current visual and osteometric methods through a multidisciplinary approach.