Morphological features of footprints in adult Slovak population - implications for forensic podiatry and anthropology

Forensic podiatry, a subdiscipline of forensic science, can be helpful in personal identification, establish the connection of an individual to a crime scene, and support other legal investigation involving the foot or footwear. Morphological evaluation of footprints focuses on evaluating individual morphological characteristics of footprints. The morphological characteristics that are evaluated in this context include: arch of the foot, inter-toe distances and type of inter-toe distance, number of humps in the metatarsal region, number and direction of crease marks, number of phalangeal marks, and presence/absence of foot deformities. The main objective of the study is to analyse morphological characteristics, their frequencies in footprints, and the association between sex, laterality and feature occurrence. Right and left footprints were taken from 170 individuals (74 males and 96 females), aged 18 to 30 years. The most statistically significant intersex differences were present in the number of humps, the number of phalangeal marks and the number and direction of crease marks. The results also show that sex has a significant association with the number and direction of crease marks, the number of humps and the presence of deformations. The presence of deformations is also significantly associated with laterality. When finding a footprint, it is important to evaluate morphological characteristics, which can subsequently facilitate the estimation of sex and help in identifying the individual.