# Biological Sex Determination in Cadavers Using Deep Learning Algorithms from Computed Tomography Images of Pelvis and Skull

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.22515 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.22515/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 9 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [A ConvNet for the 2020s](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03545/) (2022)
- [YOLOv4: Optimal Speed and Accuracy of Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10934/) (2020)
- [EfficientNetV2: Smaller Models and Faster Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00298/) (2021)
- [YOLO26: Key Architectural Enhancements and Performance Benchmarking for Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25164/) (2025)
- [YOLO Nano: a Highly Compact You Only Look Once Convolutional Neural Network for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01271/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Sexual identification of decomposed cadavers challenges traditional methods dependent on visual anthropological analysis. This study evaluates state-of-the-art deep learning (including YOLO26, YOLO11, ConvNeXt-Tiny, EfficientNetV2, ViT-B16, VGG16, and ResNet50) with transfer learning to automatically determine biological sex from forensic computed tomography (CT) scans. We analyzed 141 autopsied cadavers from the Forensic Medical Institute of Goiania-GO, including a broad age range and varying conditions of preservation. The three-dimensional reconstructions of the pelvis and skull were converted into standardized two-dimensional profile projections, contributing to the study of this new technical approach. Data augmentation techniques compensated for sample limitations. Two scenarios were validated: binary and quaternary classification (one class per sex vs. one class per anatomical region of each sex). The best-performing model achieved highly consistent results on the pelvis region and still satisfactory performance on the skull region, reaching an overall patient-level accuracy of 95.65%, recall of 92.86%, F1- score of 94.36%, and precision of 97.22%, maintaining consistent performance across the evaluated cases, including those with trauma-related artifacts. Results indicate the technical feasibility of the methodology, demonstrating that deep learning models can provide objective, high-speed skeletal analysis. Since the study was conducted using data from a single institution and a single computed tomography scanner, further validation across multiple centers and scanners is required to assess the generalizability of the proposed approach