Footprints as Morphometric Evidence for Somatic Prediction and Body Proportion Reconstruction in Forensic Medicine

Area of Science:

• Forensic Science
• Anthropometry
• Biometrics

Background:

• Footprint evidence is crucial in forensic investigations for identity determination.
• Reconstructing biological profiles, including sex and body proportions, is a key forensic objective.

Purpose of the Study:

• To apply morphometric and multivariate techniques to footprint evidence for sex estimation and body proportion reconstruction.
• To develop and evaluate discriminant and regression models using footprint metrics for forensic identification.

Main Methods:

• Collected static bilateral footprints and body measurements from a Turkish adult sample.
• Utilized discriminant function analysis and regression modeling, validated through cross-validation techniques.
• Analyzed eleven footprint parameters and eleven body measurements.

Main Results:

• Initial sex estimation accuracies were 74.0% (right foot) and 71.0% (left foot).
• Validated classification performance decreased to approximately 64-67%, indicating moderate discriminative ability.
• Regression models showed weak predictive power for stature and arm span.

Conclusions:

• Static footprint morphometry offers supportive data for sex estimation and somatic dimension reconstruction.
• Validated models are best considered ancillary and exploratory tools in forensic identification.
• These methods are not yet suitable as standalone forensic identification techniques.