Abstract: Objective Five measurements of the calcaneus taken on digital radiography(DR) of adults of Han Population of Sichuan Province were selected to determine sex by multivariate discriminant analysis.Methods Lateral radiographs of calcaneus taken from 393 subjects were collected.The samples were randomly divided into the experimental group(148 males and 186 females) and the examined group(26 males and 33 females).Five measurements were taken from the radiography.The analysis of variance(AVON) was carried out to determine if there was significant difference between the male and female.The discriminant functions were drawn by Fisher discriminant analysis.The effects of all obtained functions were evaluated with the examined samples.Results There was statistically significant difference in the five measurements between the males and the females(P<0.05).Six groups of discriminant functions were obtained with an accuracy ranged from 78.4% to 88.9%.When applied on the examined samples,the sex discriminant accuracy varied from 79.7% to 86.4%.Conclusion These five measurements acquired from the lateral radiographs of calcaneus could be used for sex assessment during forensic identification of individuals.

Key words: forensic radiology, sex determination, calcaneus, digital radiography