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Identified collections of human skeletons: Importance, characteristics and ethical issues
Soukupová, Adéla ; Pilmann Kotěrová, Anežka (advisor) ; Cvrček, Jan (referee)
The scientific value of the identified osteological collections that have been and continue to be established around the world is invaluable. Among other things, they are essential for the development and validation of biological profiling methods. This paper presents the documented identified human skeletal collections, their history, significance, limits of their use and the main types according to the origin of the skeletons, together with their specificities. It also focuses on modern identified collections and provides an overview of the most well-known ones. The ethical level of the management of human remains and the possibility of using digital technologies are not neglected, offering solutions to some of the fundamental issues related to the management of human remains. Keywords: identified skeletal collection, human skeletal remains, forensic anthropology, virtual anthropology, ethics
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Age prediction based on human face morphology
Žigová, Dominika ; Velemínská, Jana (advisor) ; Pilmann Kotěrová, Anežka (referee)
Age estimation is increasingly needed in numerous scientific disciplines, and thus the demand for appropriate age estimation methods is ever-growing. This master's thesis deals with age prediction based on the human facial morphology of people in the interval of 10 to 59 years. Three-dimensional virtual models of individuals of Czech, or Slovak, nationalities were used. The final sample for the thesis consists of 1046 3D facial scans, including 552 females and 494 males, for which age estimates were found using neural network models. Selected neural network models are based on two different approaches. While the PointNet, PointNet++, PointConv, and Xception networks use point clouds as input, the Multi- view Convolution Neural Network (MVCNN) utilizes multiple scan views. Point clouds were constructed from polygon meshes using uniform sampling of the mesh surface. In this case, models assess every single point. Therefore, a set containing the given object's 3D coordinates collected from its surface is obtained. Views of a particular scan result from recording a polygon mesh of the corresponding scan at a certain angle. This so-called multi-view approach is based on a projection, which records a 2D scan from various angles and then assesses and aggregates images into a general descriptor, which is...
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Limits in the sex estimation human skeletons resulting from the population specificity of classification functions - an example of sexual dimorphism of tibia.
Kotěrová, Anežka ; Brůžek, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Galeta, Patrik (referee)
Forensic anthropology has developed classification techniques for sex estimation of unknown skeletal remains, namely population-specific discriminant functions or other functions. What are their authors usually aware of. These methods were designed for populations that lived mostly in the late 19th and 20th century but they are presented as valid in recent populations. Their level of reliability or misclassification is important for practical use in today's forensic practice, however it is unknown. We addressed the question what the likelihood of errors would be if population specificity of discriminant functions of the tibia were disregarded. The purpose of this diploma thesis is to give an evidence about the inappropriateness of using population specific methods and methods affected by secular trend. We measured 10 variables traditionally used for sex assessment of the tibia based on a sample of segmented models of 30 male and 26 female CT images from recent adult Czech population. In addition we created two own discriminant function for Czech population, accuracy of DF1 is 85.7 % and accuracy of DF2 is 82.1 %. To estimate the error rates ignoring population specificity, we selected a published classification function of tibia for the European American population (Işcan and Miller-Shaivitz,...
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The use of biochemical methods for adult age-at-death estimation compared to the traditional morphological methods
Miškovský, Jakub ; Kotěrová, Anežka (advisor) ; Šolc, Roman (referee)
The abstract The first mentions of various methods of estimating a person's age-at-death expectancy based on his skeletal remains are as old as forensic science itself. Estimation of a person's lage-at-death estimation is an integral part of his biological profile and many other data about a given individual can be derived from it. The estimate for the remains of adults is much more complex, inaccurate and less reliable than expectancy for the remains of children, as morphological changes are not as progressive as during adolescence. Classical morphological methods allow estimation only in wide age intervals. However, there are several methods based on chemical or molecular basis that can be used to estimate the age of adults. The aim of this bachelor thesis is a general summary of principles and methods based on macroscopic visual evaluation of skeletal indicators, as well as chemical, biochemical or molecular methods and their mutual comparison with an indication of their advantages, limits and disadvantages. The key words: age at death estimation, biological profile, methods of age estimation, DNA methylation, racemization of aspartic acid
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Age-at-death estimation of the adult skeleton: New approaches to the evaluation of senescence indicators
Kotěrová, Anežka ; Brůžek, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Beňuš, Radoslav (referee) ; Obertová, Zuzana (referee)
Age-at-death estimation of adults is still a very difficult part of estimation of individual's biological profile. Current age estimation methods can estimate age accurately and reliably only as very broad age ranges. The fact that these approaches are mostly based on only one skeletal indicator, whose age changes are assessed visually, or are based on an inappropriate statistical approach, does not contribute to the improvement of this situation. The dissertation project is based on these shortcomings and it aims to contribute to a better understanding of the issue and to integrate and test new technologies and computational approaches in research. Given the methodological nature of this dissertation, the whole research was divided into three separate parts, which corresponds to the establishment of three main objectives. The first objective was to apply different sophisticated mathematical techniques in a multi-population database of visually evaluated data (n=941) of two articulation surfaces of os coxae to achieve a more accurate estimate of age. However, the resulting RMSE, which ranged between 12 to 14 years, do not indicate an accurate estimate. Furthermore, we focused on the evaluation of outputs from various scanning devices and we tested the influence of possible differences in captured...
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Gait as a diagnostic marker for neurodegeneration
Pytlíčková, Kristýna ; Novák, Jan (advisor) ; Kotěrová, Anežka (referee)
This bachelor theis describes the relationship between gait and neurodegenerative diseases. The beginning of the work is devoted to the general definition of walking and factors that contribute to its variability. The strucutre of the walk cycle is described and what phases of the cycle look like. Subsequently, the evolutionary aspect of bipedia is outlined. The next part is devoted to the neural control of motor work. It describes which areas of the central and peripheral nervous system are involved in it and how the entire pathway from the central system, where the stimulus to motion is generated, through the nerve pathways to the periphery, where the movement is performer by the muscle unit. Then the thesis deals with individual methods used for quantification of walking. For the purposes of this work, these are divided into standardized ones that are routinely performer in a clinical setting, ie in hospital or laboratory, and real-life measurements, which are used for long-term monitoring in the patient's everyday life conditions. Standardized tests are further divided into non-invasive and invasive depending on whether or not the integrity of the individual is impaired. Practical application of these methods is described on four selected neurodegenerative diseases. Attention is focused on...
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Skeletal reconstruction using virtual approach and its contribution to paleoanthropology
Veselá, Barbora ; Rmoutilová, Rebeka (advisor) ; Kotěrová, Anežka (referee)
- AJ Virtual anthropology is a multidisciplinary approach to studying fossil and bone material which combines knowledge from many scientific fields, such as biology, mathematics, anatomy and computational techniques. Fossil material is often incomplete, fragmentary and prone to damage, and virtual methods provide many benefits compared to traditional approaches, such as better preservation of fragile original fossil and bone material, and greater objectivity during reconstruction. Virtual methods have enabled significant progress in study of human past and evolution.
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Vegetarianism and veganism from the perspective of the evolution of human diet
Fleischmannová, Nikola ; Kotěrová, Anežka (advisor) ; Kaupová, Sylva (referee)
The object of this bachelor thesis is to interpret the evolution of diet of the anatomically modern human and his ancestors from the perspective of paleoanthropology and isotope analysis of skeletal remains. The findings are consistent with the view that humans are omnivorous, whose diet consists of plant and animal sources. Their ratio, however, in the course of human evolution has changed significantly, which had an impact on some major evolutionary events. Currently, there are alternative diets which tend only to plant components of food and they are called vegetarianism and veganism. In the case of the hominins the diet strictly based on plant sources would greatly influenced their evolution as we know it. Especially the encephalization and the spread to higher latitudes by the genus Homo would be limited by using only the plant sources. In today's industrialized countries the popularity of vegetarianism and veganism increases. Assuming sufficient awareness and taking necessary supplements the plant based diet may have positive impact on human health and can be recommended as an effective prevention of diseases of civilization.
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