The researchers of the National Sciences Agency of CSIRO, Australia, have developed a new artificial intelligence tool (AI) to estimate the biological sex of people, their skulls.
The tool has the potential to accelerate investigations in criminal analysis or after severe natural disasters.
Results published in Scientific reports Show the ai tool achieved a 97%accuracy. This is significantly better than the accuracy of 82% of human evaluations. And it is much faster.
The researchers point out that current methods, such as those developed in 2008 by the main physical anthropologist Philip Walker, are often limited because they derived from specific ethnic groups and skulls obtained in certain periods of time.
“For example, the Walker method was derived from English/American population groups and American native, and its application outside the US.
The Csiro team resorted to digital data to produce a deep learning model to estimate the biological sex of skulls.
They collaborated with Forensic Anthropology researchers at the University of Western Australia who provided labeled data and forensic experience to help produce the model.
The AI algorithm analyzed a data set of 200 skulls scanned by CT and was compared to human advisors. The scans were collected at Dr. Wahidin Sudirohusodo General Hospital at Hasanuddin University, Indonesia.
“Our AI tool produces its results approximately 5 times faster than humans can, which means that families waiting for research results can receive news about their loved ones more quickly,” says the first author of the study, Hollie Min.
“This AI tool has the potential to support forensic anthropologists to improve the precision of sexual estimates, while reducing the potential impact of human bias.”
“This collaboration study allowed us to address some of the perceived limitations of traditional methods and better explain diversity in forensic data,” he adds.
“Future research is needed, especially around the expansion of data sets to include various populations, improve robustness and generalization of the AI framework. Our goal is to provide forensic anthropologists with a reliable and interpretable tool to support their critical work, especially in cases involving individuals with unknown population, ”says Min.
“Our team is looking for industry collaborators to develop and translate this technology for real -life applications.”
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