Importance of frontal sinus radiographs for human identification

Humans beings can be identified through a series of methods, being fingerprints the most widely adopted when soft tissue is preserved. However, when the cadaver is carbonized or in skeletal form, forensic dental and anthropologic analysis may become necessary to identify the individual. Medical documentation (mainly xray images) may substantially improve the chances of identifying corpses initially deemed unrecognizable. This paper describes a forensic case in which human remains could be positively correlated to the identity of a missing person through analysis of images of the subject’s frontal sinus in skull posterior-anterior x-ray images.