The Accuracy between Palatoscopy Method and Cheiloscopy Method for Sex Determination in Asian Population

Forensic odontology is recently used for victim identification due to natural disasters, crimes, and other social disasters. With forensic odontology, the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team may estimate the victim's age, ethnicity, and gender with dental record and postmortem dental profile. Human soft tissues such as the palatoscopy method and cheiloscopy method can be utilized for sex determination. Palatoscopy or rugoscopy is described for the study of the pattern on palatal rugae. In comparison, cheiloscopy is defined as a study of lip prints. The palatal rugae patterns and lip prints are unique to each individual, and even the patterns are not identical in twins. It is confirmed that some patterns can be specific to females or males. Because of that, palatoscopy and cheiloscopy have been a tool for identifying a person in many regions. Nevertheless, various results were observed in palatoscopy and cheiloscopy in every region. However, the accuracy comparison of these methods in the Asian population is still controversial. Thus, this review is aimed to compare the accuracy between the palatoscopy method and the cheiloscopy method for sex determination in the Asian population. The literature is searched using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines on three electronic databases, including PubMed, Scopus, and EBSCO. After searching the literature for the result, it can be concluded that cheiloscopy had an accuracy of around 80% meanwhile palatoscopy had an accuracy of around 70%. In summary, cheiloscopy is more reliable for sex determination than palatoscopy.