Prevalence of the fabella and its general characteristics in Turkish population with magnetic resonance imaging.

INTRODUCTION: The fabella is a fibrocartilaginous or ossified sesamoid bone in the knee, largely located in the lateral tendon of the head of the gastrocnemius muscle. In this study, the prevalence, gender differences, localization and size of the fabella were determined in a Turkish population to make a comparison with other population studies in the literature. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thousand patients (500 females, 500 males) who underwent knee magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with fabella in all three planes, including axial, sagittal and coronal evaluated, retrospectively. All MRI examinations were performed using a 1.5 T unit. Patients with a history of trauma or operation, motion artifacts and patients who could not be evaluated due to image quality were excluded. Anteroposterior diameter in sagittal plan (sAP) of the fabella and the fabella-femur distance was measured. Measurements were evaluated with Pearson's Chi-squared and Mann-Whitney U test for non-homogeneous data in SPSS program, and ANOVA test for homogeneous data. A p value of < 0.05 was considered significant in all analyses. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of fabella was found to be 155 cases. Unilateral fabella was detected in 72.9% of the cases, of which 56.6% were on the right side and 43.4% were on the left side. The median value of AP diameter in sagittal plan was calculated as 4.40 ± 1.31 mm. Concerning the gender-related examination the sAP diameter of the fabella was larger in men than in women (p < 0.05). The median value of FFD was calculated as 2.50 ± 0.50 mm. The distribution of FFD between genders was not statistically significant (p = 0.492). CONCLUSION: The fabella is usually a sesamoid bone that can be detected incidentally by imaging techniques. The incidence in the Turkish population is 15.5%, and no gender difference was detected. It is clear that further studies on the basis of populations are needed, especially considering that pathological problems remain in question and there is a lack of scientific data (variations, developmental characteristics, etc.) on sesamoid bones.

Determining gender by taking measurements from magnetic resonance images of the patella.

BACKGROUND: A key step in making a positive identification in forensic medicine is the establishment of a biological profile, which involves determining factors such as gender, age, ancestry, and stature. The goal of this study was to determine if gender could be established by taking various measurements of the patella taken from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images and analyzing the variations by gender. METHODS: The sample group consisted of 220 patients (110 male and 110 female) whose patella were measured using MRI images of their left knee. Reasons for exclusion were any previous surgery, patella bipartite variation, any fracture in the patella due to trauma or findings of mass or infection. Three measurements - transverse length (TP), craniocaudal length (CC) and anteroposterior length (APP) - were taken off T2-weighted axial and sagittal MRI scans. The program SPSS (Version 21.0) was used to make a descriptive analysis, independent t-test and discriminative analysis. RESULTS: It was found possible to determine gender with an accuracy rate of 91% for females and 87% for males. Since measurements were made individually the accuracy for gender estimation is lower than that seen in other methods. CONCLUSION: The findings are important in that they show that it is possible to determine gender with a high degree of accuracy using just a few measurements taken from the patella.

Metric assessment of ancestry from the vertebrae in South Africans.

Ancestry estimation is one of the four basic steps for developing a biological profile. Research has shown that there are a certain amount of morphological and anthropometric differences among skeletons in populations. The aim of this study was to examine the Pretoria Bone Collection to analyze the ancestral variation in the vertebrae of the South African black and white population. The sample was composed of complete vertebrae from 144 individuals (73 whites, 71 blacks). Ancestry differences were assessed using the discriminant function procedure. Regarding the results of this study, when vertebral columns were evaluated, the data indicated (with high reliability) a difference between the two ancestries. The analysis provided an accuracy rate of 98 % in males and 93.5 % in females. Compared to skeleton pieces such as the skull and the pelvis, which have been studied often with high reliability results, these rates are highly significant.