Gender Determination of Foramen Magnum and Occipital Condyles in Dogs Using Computed Tomography

The foramen magnum (FM) and occipital condyles (OC) are important anatomical features in anthropology and zooarchaeology for the identification of breeds, species, and gender. The present study aimed to determine the gender of dogs using morphometric measurements of the FM and OC. A total of 27 healthy dogs without any pathology, 11 females and 16 males, were used in this study. Morphometric measurements were performed on tomography images of the dogs’ heads. Before morphometric measurements were made on the images obtained in DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) format, interactive MPR (Multi-Planar Reformat) and positioning were performed in ITK-SNAP software. After rotation and positioning, eight different morphometric measurements were performed on the FM and OC using ITK-SNAP software. According to the morphometric measurement results, no statistical difference was determined in the length of the right OC(LROC), length of the left OC (LLOC), width of the right OC (WROC), width of the left OC (WLOC), intercondylar width (ICW), intercondylar distance (ICD), and internal width of the FM (IWFM) in female and male dogs. A difference was observed in the internal length of the FM (ILFM) parameter, which was found to be statistically significantly higher in males. It is thought that the morphometric measurement results obtained from the FM and OC of dogs will contribute to zooarchaeological and anthropological studies examining the differences between gender and head structure in dogs.