Human and machine perception of sex-related information in external ear morphology
Annals of Human Biology, cilt.53, sa.1, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 53 Sayı: 1
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1080/03014460.2026.2751150
- Dergi Adı: Annals of Human Biology
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Anthropological Literature, BIOSIS, Compendex, EMBASE, Geobase, MEDLINE, SportDiscus, Directory of Open Access Journals, Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), Biomedical Reference Collection: Corporate Edition (EBSCO)
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Ear morphology, forensic anthropology, human observers, machine learning, sex estimation
- Kütahya Sağlık Bilimleri Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Background: The external ear is important in forensic investigations because of its complex morphology and distinctive physical characteristics. Although ear morphology exhibits sex-related variation, its value for sex estimation remains uncertain. Aim: To compare the ability of human observers and a machine learning model to extract sex-related information from ear images. Subjects and methods: A balanced independent test set of 60 ear images (30 female, 30 male) was evaluated by 401 participants from the general population and by a machine learning model trained on a separate dataset of 500 images (250 female, 250 male). Results: Human observers achieved 53.1% accuracy, with higher accuracy for female ears (60.2%) than male ears (39.8%). The machine learning model achieved 63.3% accuracy, with sensitivities of 83.3% for female ears and 43.3% for male ears, showing the same tendency towards higher performance for female ears. Conclusions: Under the conditions examined, isolated ear images provided limited discriminatory information for sex estimation. Although the machine learning model achieved numerically higher accuracy than untrained human observers, neither approach achieved sufficient accuracy to support the use of isolated ear images as a standalone method for forensic sex estimation.