2020/12/01
Forensic Magzine November 30, 2020:Method to Estimate Body Mass of Human Remains Yields More Accurate ProfileWhen developing a biological profile of unidentified human remains, forensic anthropologists routinely estimate sex, age, ancestry and stature. Body mass, on the other hand, is generally not included. But, research has shown body mass can affect certain biological characteristics, including age—meaning estimates for individuals outside “normal” BMI may be incorrect.
“As a forensic anthropologist, if I knew the individual was obese, I would give a much broader age range in my report. It probably is as good or better than stature,” Danny Wescott, director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University (FACTS), explained to Forensic.
Wescott, his anthropology colleague Deborah Cunningham and researchers at Johns Hopkins University just received a two-year, $680,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice to support their research into and development of a novel method for the accurate estimation of body mass category of skeletal remains.
Wescott and Cunningham will use high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scanning to examine joint size, trabecular bone structure, bone shaft cross-sectional properties and whole bone shape to see if there are any visible differences that can be attributed to obesity and its effect on weight-bearing bones of the skeleton.
“If you are heavier, you are putting more ground reaction force on your bone, therefore your bones react to that,” Cunningham told Forensic. “There should be certain characteristics you have that we can predict that would be associated with that. So, can we utilize this information to predict an individual’s body mass category?” more